#antisemitism for ts

[reconditarmonia]

(cw: antisemitism)

Here's a comment thread I saw on Facebook the other day. (redacted for my protection, not that of the writer)

I guess I can't specifically articulate what I'm trying to illustrate with this. Something about how even if you (a general pro-Palestine you, and let me add as well the should-be-unnecessary caveat that I'm also pro-Palestine) even accept at all the existence of people who are pro-Palestine for malicious, antisemitic reasons, there's a sort of implicit or explicit assumption that of course our positions and the way we articulate them are progressive and anti-racist and have absolutely no overlap with anyone who's just here for the hate. No one would want to repost stop-genocide this-is-the-new-Holocaust Hind-the-child-martyr images if they weren't on our side.

Except oh wait you keep reading the guy who shared these posts and he's a fucking neonazi claiming that Zionists are ethnically cleansing white people to pay reparations for crimes against Black and Indigenous people and also corrupting America by inventing porn. I recognize I'm probably mostly preaching to the choir here anyway, but at what point in the thread did that become obvious to you? I've had to message people on this site before pointing out that the cool anti-Zionist post they'd shared literally bore the logo of the Goyim Defense League. Would you recognize all these comments as neonazi talking points before resharing them or internalizing the rhetoric?

Oh, and was anyone curious about what post this comment thread was started on?

[hellsbellschime]

it's so heartbreaking that there's so much antisemitism in the pro palestinian movement. whenever you bring this up, people will gaslight you, but people are literally cheering on the deaths of innocent jewish people and trying to silence jewish people??? how is that not antisemitic??

Yeah it's extremely unsettling and I am not happy to be proven right on the obvious issue of people using a just cause as a means to convince people that actually antisemitism is totally justified too because Jewish people are actually evil. I try to take comfort in the fact that brain-broken weirdos on social media don't represent the entirety of humankind, but there are actually people IRL harassing and attacking Jewish people and Israeli people and it's disgusting, and it's being way exacerbated by antisemitism that is baked into world culture that people don't recognize or want to acknowledge. People are falling for and repeating dangerous propaganda that ironically will also make the lives of Palestinian people even shittier, and they're falling for it and repeating it because of internalized prejudice.

Plus, real talk, aside from antisemitism being obviously morally wrong, antisemitism has been cyclical for literal millennia, and when we've reached the point where people of any political POV can at least agree that the world would be fine if we could just deal with those evil Jews, that usually means the world is careening towards an absolute catastrophic shitshow that will destroy the lives of millions. So it would be nice if some people, especially leftists, could confront their internalized antisemitism.

[bilgisticallykosher]

Following a bunch of Jews and allies like I have no idea what these fandoms are or what you're talking about, but at least I can trust that you don't want me dead, or won't cross-examine me to decide if I'm "one of the good ones" or not.

[eternalgirlscout]

i haven't seen anyone talk about it probably because all my comics mutuals of old are fellow longtime mcu haters but breaking news the beloathed marvel cinematic universe managed to turn up the dial even MORE on the maximoff-related antisemitism. somebody get my boy out of there please i'm on my knees here

[halfgood-halfbad-badboy]

Oh my god every time I lot onto this app there’s a new insane take. I can roll my eyes at the Thomas dick suckers who think he’s done absolutely nothing wrong but the fucking nazi headcanons????????? What the fuck????????????

[reconditarmonia]

The Dutch article is paywalled (so I can't even google translate it to confirm specific details), but the headline itself confirms the "Jew hunt" language.

[reconditarmonia]

Yeeeeah, I'm not sure that "stop fighting anyone who isn't the Real True Enemy" is going to work out quite that way. I would love to believe that the people posting/reblogging this mean "we're going to stop aggroing random Jews" rather than "we're going to accuse Jews who call us out of being divisive infiltrators," but that would be a bit willfully blind.

I am so serious when I say that now is the time to take your activism offline. I am not spending the next four years squabbling on social media or getting woke points by reblogging posts that my followers already agree with. There are real places in your offline community where you can do good if you seek them out

[hellsbellschime]

Its really weird that people think being pro-Palestine in general means "antisemitism" when it's not. We're just against genocide. And the ones who are, are terrible people for that. But most are not. And it's also weird when people claim that the protests being done in and around college campuses are anti even though the vast majority of those organizing it are actually Jewish students.

The thing of it is, they don't. The reason why so many people are seeing antisemitism in the pro-Palestine movement is that a lot of people are repeating antisemitic tropes that have existed for thousands of years. FFS, a fuckton of people in the current "movement" are self-proclaimed anti-Zionists, and Zionism is a philosophy that Jewish people are entitled to self-determination, do you not think that's weird or telling at all? If it's not antisemitic then there's no reason to revolve it around Jewish people, Jewish ideas, and Jewish philosophies, and yet a lot of people's statements and actions are very focused on all things Jewish when they shouldn't be.

And it's interesting, in a lot of the instances where I've seen someone suffer consequences for "supporting Palestine" I've looked into it and that person did something that was blatantly antisemitic. And this is yet another perfect example of the gaslighting that the other anon was talking about, because of course not all pro-Palestine activists are antisemitic, but to act as if Jewish people who are concerned about the abrupt rise in antisemitism are imagining it and act as if it's all fine because you know some Jewish people protesting for Palestine is absurd.

[queermania]

Fucking cunt

are you done or should we put you in time out so you can continue your tantrum?

[notchainedtotrauma]

no name...the superficiality of it all...the violence of it all...Jay Electronica being an antisemitic hateful motherfucker is as surprising to me to as a corpse eventually rotting. What's "interesting" to me is a person that claims to be a communist and has led and created a "radical" book club listening to that verse and still putting it on her album, and then having the audacity to turn off her Instagram comments. Which, as soon as an artist (in any field) shows up with all the right bits of theories and can name all the right thinkers, and can actually define intersectionality, this is when trouble starts. As demonstrated by no name. Also *mimes slicing throat* that dude over there.

[lambrinichampagne]

Anon I literally needed to be escorted to and from the train-station by work colleagues because someone in the area found out I was Jewish and waited until the office closed to follow me while shouting abuse. Please don't question my understanding of antisemitism.

[zaritarazi]

Me after seeing all the weird shit dc did with apparently "biblical" "angels" and carter/katar and shayera the past like 5 years: yeah even looking at this is treyf actually i called the big guy and he said "who is this" so it was probably the wrong number but like. Unfortunately in my religion i can't recognize this part of comics canon. But good luck to you

[anghraine]

Tumblr posting isn't the hallmark of activism and no one is obligated to talk about Palestine on here. That being said, it sure is interesting that you never mentioned Israel's ongoing genocide until you decided to make a post about how antisemitic people who do talk about it can be (and provided no example, so it's vague enough it serves no purpose whatsoever, can't be argued with of learnt from).

I did wonder if that would be someone's takeaway (and even that it would likely be on anon), so this response was already largely prepared.

In any case, my fandom account is not the totality of my existence, even online, and particularly not at the moment (I used to talk about politics more here, but don't tend to use this account for that kind of thing these days; I've also barely acknowledged the Trump/Harris election that will directly and drastically impact my own life and which I'm following closely). I mentioned the grotesque antisemitism directed at Jewish people regardless of whether they're Israeli or not, mainly coming from people who have no more stake in what happens in I/P than I do, because it's become so common over the last year in fandom spaces and conversations, and is therefore relevant to this account. There are no genocides happening specifically on Tumblr, but there are people here using Israel to present their pre-existing antisemitic ideas as leftist praxis and to air them more openly.

In addition to that, I don't generally feel the need to Be Seen Having a Take on matters I'm not especially familiar with—particularly as a US American, since we tend to be too quick to share our super important center of the world opinions on other countries' geopolitics regardless of how much we know or understand about them—until I've had time to think, research, and phrase what I want to say. Once I was more familiar, I wanted to be clear that I consider Israel's actions horrific and that, simultaneously, I find the increasingly regular fandom antisemitism I've seen intolerable and unjustified (and I did feel these needed to be in the same post to avoid being misunderstood even in good faith). I kicked my post out of drafts because at that point I'd seen enough to feel equipped to do so and felt it was sufficiently clear about where I stand, and because (as I said in my tags) of a specific and particularly abhorrent display of antisemitism I saw on Tumblr yesterday.

I also did not feel the need to duplicate and broadcast specific instances of antisemitism (much less that one) in order to dunk on it or whatever. Broadly though not universally, I prefer talking about overall patterns that bother me more than litigating isolated instances, even when it's ... like, annoying trends in Pride and Prejudice fanfic or something, but all the more when it's a systemic social problem. And given that I have a number of active Jewish mutuals who would see my post, I didn't want to inflict it on them all over again. If you think I would find something grotesquely antisemitic that's actually totally fine, then you're free to find someone else to follow.

[bilgisticallykosher]

You have it spot-on about psychological torture. I briefly mentioned this...either in another post or in DMs, I can't remember anymore, but this is so well said. They are cruel for the sake of being cruel. Whatever they can do to harm us, physically, mentally, they will.

The act of promising to send back a person's corpse and then switching it out with an unidentified person as an act of psychological torture is something I've only seen from my worst cases as a forensic scientist.

I've seen it from organized crime outfits, typically Russian mob and cartels, and from serial killers. This reminds me more of the latter rather than the former as the outfits tend to behave in a certain manner and abide by various rules. Serial killers, however, often delight in the psychological torture of their victims, victims' family, and community.

There's a number of cases I've been brought in on to help ID corpses that were not who the killer said they were. Causing pain and anguish for the families and community to their delight.

In this instance, making a big show of returning these hostages and then pulling the rug out from underneath Israel and the greater Jewish community only serves one purpose; to cause psychological and emotional harm. And make no mistake, the people justifying Hamas and their actions up until this moment and beyond are acting like every True Crime Serial Killer Girlie that has come up to me in my career to try and justify the actions of people like Dahmer, Gacy, Gein, and so on. "They're just misunderstood." "What did you think they would do? They had a rough life. It's not their fault they did these things." "They're just fighting back against the system that made them this way." All of this is to take the onus of responsibility off of the serial killer, just as all these anti-Israel activists take the onus off of Hamas and its violent terrorism. And just like a True Crime Girlie coming up to me with their binder full of notes about why their serial killer blorbo is good, your opinion that Hamas is somehow justified in their action is worth nothing. You've presented yourself as lacking the moral and ethical stand point that condemns such actions as taking families hostage, promising to return them, and then pulling a "switcheroo" last minute to be cruel. You're not good people, and no amount of mental gymnastics to somehow blame Israel for this will make you a good person. And if somehow you're a fellow Jew? Well, I think you've burned every bridge with the community as of this moment.

[hellsbellschime]

"We disappointed Dutch Jewry during the Holocaust, and tonight, we disappointed you again," the King of the Netherlands told Israel's President Herzog on Friday.

The two spoke after violent pogroms targeting Israeli soccer fans took place in Amsterdam, during which several were injured and three went missing.

-I wonder if this is how people felt in 1938. Jews feeling persecuted in Europe, the rise of far right authoritiation governments.

Yeah, antisemitism is cyclical and a few years ago I was naive enough to think we'd moved past it, but we haven't and it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better. I expect attacks against Jewish people to get A LOT LOT WORSE given that Trump is so enthusiastic about the destruction of Palestine, and I'm sure there'll be a lot of post-pogrom statements like this one, and in a few decades people are going to be like wow I can't believe that people were so antisemitic back then, thank god we're better than that now and just targeting the Jewish people who are actually the true bad guys.

[lambrinichampagne]

Ngl it's a little crazy that I follow so many antisemities and leave kudos on their fics and likes on their posts. And I know they wish for nothing more than for me to be raped and murdered and they think they're righteous in that want.

But things irl are so shit for so many different reasons, some relating to my Jewishness some completely unrelated, that I can't bring myself to deny fandom joy despite the shit I'm subjected to online.