#leftists are not immune to anti Semitism

[aloeverawrites]

Tw for anti-Semitism and other kinds of hate but

Just saw a leftist blog posting an anti-Semitic quote from Malcom X from when he was listening to an anti-Semitic, homophobic, hate group that now has ties to white supremacy, thinks 911 was an inside job and also that the government is using chemicals to make people gay. And then the blog made that out as a pro-Palestine position.

Great job guys you did it. You saved leftism. Bigotry is gone now. :)

That was sarcasm by the way-

[angstics]

I dont know if it is fair to call people who ignorantly use tropes like “lizard people” and “secret world order” anti-semitic when these ideas are only known in the mainstream as ridiculous conspiracies that insane people believe, not anti-jew dog whistles. i dont think people should use them without this context, but it is Understandable that this is not well-known. Per the “dog”

[pineapplerightsideupcake]

Radical feminism is a left wing ideology incompatible with all forms of colonialism and imperialism, including Zionism. If you’re going to quit pretending to be a fence sitter and go full mask off by reblogging straight up Zionist apologia, do the rest of us actual radicals a favour and stop associating yourself with the radfem label, thanks

Bestie, radical feminism is an academic framework for analysis developed by mostly American and other western scholars. Radical feminism in non western nations may be similar but it isn’t identical. The radical feminism on tumblr is definitely of the western variety and consequently has zero to say about a geo political conflict between two peoples in the Middle East; except to observe that when war comes, it is women that receive the worst of it.

All I’ve done is call out anti semitism and blatant misinformation. I’ve never defended the actions of the Israeli government or IDF. I’ve never called the suffering of Palestinians fake or exaggerated.

The people of Palestine are not aided by you uncritically reblogging everything you hear that supports your worldview. You are not immune to propaganda because you “picked the right side”.

Also this idea that every belief we have must come packaged together with 1000 other beliefs is so fucking AMERICAN.

There are only two sides according to the American imagination so if I espouse one belief labeled leftism I most agree with every “leftist” position. So when leftists turn on Jews I have to forsake my family and friends and community or else I can’t be a feminist.

You haven’t unlearned the TRA thinking that leftism is a unified hive mind where we’ve all agreed on the “right” thing to think.

Also fascinating that you care about Palestine, just not enough to attach your URL to your message.

[fearsomeandwretched]

Also the point of that post was not that I believe I'm immune to propaganda lmfao but that I am well versed enough in very basic dogwhistles that yeah I don't think a Nazi could fool me for HOURS into thinking we're allies but anyway the whole point was not that I or anyone else are intellectually superior but that many ppl on the left cannot recognize very basic anti semitic talking points and that this is dangerous and specifically puts Jewish ppl in danger and makes leftist spaces unsafe for them

[spale-vosver]

Friendly reminder that being a leftist does not make you immune to racism and anti-Semitism! (See below, screenshots from two white, goyische mods of a leftist discord server I'm a part of. Yellow and green are mods, red is me)

I'm very much also white and goyische (though I am planning on converting) but this caught my eye. Use your privilege to call out bigotry in leftist spaces!

[krogans-give-the-best-cuddles]

Pretty frustrating to see like xtian supremacy only talked about in specific corners of the left. Like specifically, jewish people will talk about it, and all the xtians who see themselves as really progressive... Won't interact with that at all. Won't criticize how xtianity has been baked into our culture and the effects that has

A lot of the atheists who interact with that will only do it to then go on and be a shithead to every other religion

[anarchotolkienist]

How can I criticise Israel without being inadvertently antisemitic? Is it as sinple as bringing it into a wider discussion of settler colonial states? Certainly many of my compatriots can fall into antisemitism if they talk on the topic long enough - how can I steer them away from that

This will be a long-ish post. The most important think, I thihnk, is to remember to put Israel in its context. It is not unique as a settler coloniual state, and it is not unique in its status as a US subsidiary, and it is not unique in the mistreatment of its minority population, as you say. I honestly think that this is the MAIN way of doing it. I also think that putting it in its context as a form of what is fashionably on the Left called "liberatory nationalism/nationalism of an oppressed nation" to try and understand why Zionism had such a wide appeal, including on the Left (The Labour Zionists, openly Marxist, were the majority party in the early yers of Israel for example, and the Kibbutzes had large influence from anti-naitonalist (occationally territorialist) anarchists (see A Living Revolution for this), to take a few examples) would be helpful. Zionism is not alone as liberatory nationalist projects that turned around and massively suppressed indigenous peoples as soona s their aim was achieved, and that too needs to be remembered.  Aditionally, we need to understand that majority support for Zionism from within the Jewish community only happened after every other way of dealing with anti-Semitism had obviously failed in the most horribly tragic manner possible - the Holocaust. The Socialist Internaitonalism of the Bund failed to the obviousincapacity of the socialist movement, in power over much of Europe, to withstand the Fascist wave and to take any extraordinary measures to try and save the Jewish people of eastern europe. The communist promise of assimilation into the global proletariat failed with the anti-semitic purges and prosecutions of Stalin showing that the worker's state in no way was immune to it's imperial predecessor. The liberal assimilationism of the Jewish Enlightenment, which promised that secularisation and assimilation into Protestant christian Europe would solve the problem of anti-Semitism OBVIOUSLY didn't work - German jewry were the most assimilated in the world, and even descendents of converts died in agony because of their percieved Jewishness. The strict anarchist internationalism of the main Jewish anarchist press completely ignored the unique positionality of the Jewish working class and had nothing to say to the problem other than the vague promise of proletarian internaitonalism when all 'religious bigotries' are forgotten. What was left to try? How is the Left to present a serious case that we can elimae anti-semitism from the WORLD when we have so horrendously failed to do it in our own ranks? I still think that the main hope lies in internationalism and lies in socialism, that the Bundists had it closer to being correct than anyone else and that things COULD have shaken out their way, as I think most Leftists believe. But we can't deny that it DIDN'T shake out their way.  Sorry, I got carried away. Yes, it's a mistake. yes, it didn't work either, at what it proclaimed - anti-semitism is growing and Israel is allied to a lot of these forces - and it did so at a horrendous human cost to the Palestinians. But we need to remember where it comes from, too. Those are my two biggest recommendations, really - to remember the context, to not make a monster out of Zionism out of proportion with other nationalisms, to oppose other settler-colonial states as strenously (Turkey would be a good start, given that there is an international campaign to boycott and cut all support to them, as I mentioned - find your local Kurdish community group for information on that). As far as speaking to comrades about it, I can only hope that you're more diplomatic than me and manage to do it better than me. I think running educations on anti-Semitism (espescially left-wing anti-semitism) to recognise the tropes for what they are (for example, so that when Electronic Intifada says that Rabbis are poisoning Palestinian water wells to drive them out, you recognise that as an anti-semitic canard and do some research, finding out that the suppesed Rabbi Goldberg doesn't exist and they made it up because they're anti-semites, instead of sharing it and then getting mad and calling people who point out that this is anti-semitic Zionist shills - or make a petition saying that the Labour Anti-Semitism "Witch-hunt" is "manufactured by powerful interests that control the media", but I digress). Anti-Semitism is endemic on the Left, and people REALLY dislike confronting it, because it hurts their self-image. I mostly get shut down with the "criticising Israel is not anti-semitic). Best of luck, comrade.

[elalmadelmar]

Anyone can be radicalized.

ANYONE.

You are not immune to propaganda. No one is immune to propaganda. And that's all it really takes.

A shit-ton of this radicalization comes through progressive causes argued in bad faith.

JKR got radicalized into TERFism through anti-DV feminism poisoned with gender essentialism. Quite a lot of leftists get radicalized into anti-Semitism via anti-colonialism that claims Israel's oppression of Palestine is somehow uniquely Jewish. Neopagan communities, particularly but absolutely NOT exclusively Norse neopaganism, have to be constantly vigilant against the people who want to use it as a gateway for neo-Nazism.

You. Can. Be. Radicalized.

People keep searching for ways to argue that JK Rowling has always been a horrible person deep down as a way of explaining her recent behaviour.

But here's the thing: that's probably not true at all.

Pretending it is discounts the harsher, scarier truth: that even decent, well-meaning people can be radicalised by dangerous, hateful, predatory groups, and given enough time they can become truly hideous versions of their former selves.

It can happen to me. It can happen to you. It can happen to any of us, given the right mix of circumstances. And over the past few years, we've seen it happen to one of the most famous children's authors of our age.

Nobody is immune.

[dailynewswebsite]

Folk devils and fear: QAnon feeds into a culture of moral panic

Folks show Qanon messages on cardboards throughout a political rally in Bucharest, Romania on Aug. 10, 2020. (Shutterstock)

Utilizing conspiracy theories that embrace baby intercourse traffickers and eating places serving human flesh, QAnon has unleashed a modern-day ethical panic.

It’s now greater than 30 years since sociologists proposed ethical panic as a technique to perceive the incitement of concern round a perceived enemy. Within the opening paragraph of his canonical examine of well-liked media from 1972, Folks Devils and Ethical Panics, sociologist Stanley Cohen outlined his fundamental thesis:

Societies look like topic, from time to time, to durations of ethical panic. A situation, episode, individual or group of individuals emerges to develop into outlined as a risk to societal values and pursuits.

In President Donald Trump’s America, these individuals are queers, racial minorities and Jews.

On the time Cohen was writing, his focus was on well-liked media and the manipulation of mods and rockers as ethical degenerates. He argued that these in positions of authority used sensationalized headlines to implement what they noticed as threats to social order.

We discover ourselves in the same place in the present day. The media in query is social, however the targets are as outdated as journalism itself.

Rights and recognition

When Trump refused to name out QAnon in his Oct. 15 city corridor, preferring to indicate sympathy for its purported combat in opposition to pedophilia, he tapped into an ethical panic with deep historic roots. The hazard that QAnon poses will not be that it’s endorsed by the president. It’s the way in which it speaks to long-festering hatreds that transcend political affiliation.

Throughout a information convention on Aug. 20, 2020, Trump responds to a journalist asking him to touch upon QAnon.

QAnon was born digital within the age of “platformed antagonism,” the place social media breathes new life into racist stereotypes. However its enchantment owes to an extended historical past of animosity in the direction of sexual and racial minorities at vital factors of their quest for rights and recognition. It does this by means of the usage of the modern-day blood libel accusation.

Homicide, matzo and mayhem

Costs of formality homicide have been ceaselessly waged in opposition to Europe’s Jewish populations as an effort to strengthen the exclusionary logic of ethnic nationalism. Jews have been accused of kidnapping and murdering gentile youngsters in order to boil their blood and make matzo. Ritual homicide accusations may lead to mob violence, because it was in 1901 within the case of a neighborhood Jewish butcher within the West Prussian city of Koenitz.

Jews have been additionally slandered for his or her function within the so-called white slave commerce, the luring of younger white girls into prostitution. This mixture of sexual extra and ritualistic fervour went hand-in-hand with Jewish emancipation, visibility and new-found claims to equal citizenship.

Each the Pizzagate and Cannibal Membership conspiracies in QAnon share roots with the blood libel accusation.

Ideas that Hillary Clinton and financier George Soros have been a part of a world intercourse ring have lengthy permeated social media networks. In 2018, these claims morphed in a brand new course: youngsters weren’t simply being lured right into a sexual underground, they have been thought-about sources of adrenochrome, a chemical with hallucinogenic qualities harvested for satanic rituals. A cabal of elites didn’t simply harvest youngsters’s blood, they consumed the flesh itself: as proof, conspiracy theorists pointed to an internet site that falsely claimed that Raven Chan — Mark Zuckerberg’s sister-in-law — was concerned with a faux restaurant referred to as the Cannibal Membership.

Though the story has since been debunked, it’s alive and effectively on social media, surfacing most lately within the hashtags utilized by Twitterers within the wake of the Trump city corridor, linking Hollywood to human sacrifice, secret societies and pedophilia.

Panic on the actions

Related ethical panics accompanied the pursuit of equality by gays and lesbians, with fears across the seduction of minors ceaselessly used as an argument in opposition to legal justice reform. The brand new-found visibility of the Homosexual Liberation Entrance and lesbian, feminist and Black energy actions unleashed a preoccupation with adolescence, childhood sexuality and age of consent.

Whereas the Diagnostic and Statistical Guide of Psychological Issues — used to outline and classify psychological problems — eliminated homosexuality from its listing of paraphilias in 1973, conservatives lamented the legalization of same-sex sexuality for what they noticed as a sea change in societal values. Anti-gay rights activist Anita Bryant’s “Defend America’s Youngsters” marketing campaign gave this ethical panic a celeb face.

The AIDS epidemic, scandals inside the Catholic Church, trans rights and, most lately, the Jeffrey Epstein assaults have all forged renewed consideration on the historical past of adjusting social and sexual mores led to by the sexual revolution.

At its core, the preoccupation with pedophilia and childhood sexuality is an try to guard the heterosexual household because the bedrock of society, a salve in opposition to degeneration and extra. There are too many examples to listing, from Pope Benedict blaming gay “cliques” for the overall collapse of morality within the late 20th century to opponents of the 2015 Obergefell resolution legalizing homosexual marriage, a trigger célèbre within the conservative media linking homosexual, lesbian, and trans rights with pedophilia as a leftist plot in opposition to the household.

Even Dr. Anthony Fauci — a member of the White Home Coronavirus Activity Power — was not immune from conspiracy theorists who falsely linked his spouse to Epstein handler Ghislaine Maxwell.

The QAnon conspiracy idea attracts collectively anti-Semitism, sexual extra, homophobia and race-baiting in a modern-day ethical panic. They resonate as a result of they’ve a spot within the up to date zeitgeist as merchandise of long-standing animosity in opposition to change.

De-platforming QAnon will not be sufficient. For whereas Trump is proving himself to be conspiracist-in-chief, the tradition of people devils and concern is of our personal making.

Jennifer Evans receives funding from the Social Science Humanities Analysis Council of Canada and the Social Science Analysis Council.

from Growth News https://growthnews.in/folk-devils-and-fear-qanon-feeds-into-a-culture-of-moral-panic/ via https://growthnews.in

[benrleeusa]

[David E. Bernstein] Why are American Jews Increasingly Concerned about Domestic Anti-Semitism

The percentage of Americans with anti-Semitic attitudes has been stable, but anti-Semites are more active, more visible, and more willing to express their views than in the past.

I've been hearing from Jewish friends I respect, even before the Pittsburgh shooting, that they perceive that anti-Semitism is on the rise in the U.S. These friends have disparate ideological views; some are on the left, some on the right politically.

As I've noted before, the data don't (yet?) support a significant increase in American anti-Semitism. The ADL regularly polls American attitudes toward Jews. The most recent survey was conducted in late October, at the heart of a bitter election campaign that some argue was infected with anti-Semitism. The rate of anti-Semitism found was 14%, within the same 12 to 15% bound it's been in ADL studies since 2004. (I've debunked the notion that there has been a 60% rise in anti-Semitic incidents elsewhere, but it's possible that there has been some increase in incidents.)

Let's assume in the absence of contrary data that there has not been a significant, or perhaps any, increase in anti-Semitic attitudes among Americans. Why might Jewish Americans still fell under increased threat from anti-Semitism?

I can't rule out moral panic, but I think there is a better explanation. Let's begin with some background, starting with the fact that many Jews reasonably see themselves as vulnerable population; the Holocaust is always in the back of our minds, and we notice, even if most Americans don't, that Jews are by far the religious group most targeted by hate crimes. The security guards and truck bomb barriers at Jewish institutions are a constant reminder of the threat of anti-Semitic violence.

Let's add that American Jews notice very negative trends in Europe. The Jewish right sees what's going on in places like Sweden, France, and Great Britain (where the formerly mainstream center-left Labour Party has been taken over by leftist anti-Semites) and fears that nascent anti-Semitism on the anti-Israel left will eventually lead to a similar situation in the U.S The Jewish left sees the rise of anti-Semitic neo-fascist parties in Europe and, worries about the U.S. heading in that direction. Less ideologically driven Jews are justifiably concerned about both phenomena.

It doesn't help that neither the mainstream American right or left exhibits much sensitivity to Jewish concerns about anti-Semitism. On the right, the common response is that "we're pro-Israel, what do you want from us?" Meanwhile, the Jewish sense of vulnerability is positively disparaged on the left, which considers being Jewish in the U.S. to at best a subset of "white privilege." (Jews themselves are not immune from the latter; consider this sermon by a Reform rabbi about his white privilege, in which he conclude that being "both Jewish and white puts us in the perfect place be make a positive difference, by being allies with those who experience discrimination." Note that he seems to assume that Jews themselves never experience discrimination.)

That background, while important, doesn't explain Jews' sense of increased anti-Semitism. I think the best explanation for that sense is that even if the percentage of anti-Semites in the American public hasn't increased, they are more active, more visible, and more willing to express their views publicly.

More Active

On the right, the internet has given anti-Semites a way of much more easily coordinating than they had in the days of handprinted newsletters and secretive meetings in Days Inn conference rooms. On the left, the rise of Israel as a major issue for the left has given anti-Semites an opportunity to spread anti-Semitism in the guise of anti-Zionism.

More Visible

Not too long ago, expression of anti-Semitic sentiments was suppressed by media gatekeepers; mainstream news organizations wouldn't publish anti-Semites, nor would respectable journals of opinion. But now the gatekeepers are in a free-for-all market, and they can't control what is said on blogs, websites, etc., and their own editorial standards have declined. Twitter gives an easy public forum for anti-Semites. And the comments sections of most sites are unmoderated, providing a forum for anti-Semites regardless of the editorial perspective of the site. You won't find a site with more philo-Semitic site than Instapundit, for example, but you will still see some anti-Semitism in the comments. Even this blog, written mostly by Jews, attracts its share of anti-Semitic commentators, more so when it was hosted by the Washington Post.

More Willing to Express their Views Publicly

In our polarized times, the left and right are much less willing to police their "own," focusing instead only on the sins of the other side. The result, for example, is that Harvard and University Chicago professors can publish an entire book that is essentially a long anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, without any damage to their careers or reputation, because the book served the purposes of the political left. Donald Trump can retweet from anti-Semitic website, not apologize for doing so, and not have any political consequences. Another factor is immigration from the Middle East. Middle Eastern immigrants are arriving from societies in which anti-Semitism is widely accepted, so it's not surprising that Middle Eastern university students who, for example, join Students for Justice in Palestine, are sometimes not embarrassed to engage in openly anti-Semitic rhetoric.

Making matters worse, there is no longer any widely respected anti-Semitism watchdog in the United States. The ADL is disparaged by the right for its drastically increased partisanship since a Democratic operative took over its leadership. The left rejects the ADL because it advocates for Israel, and refuses to adhere to the increasingly common claim that anti-Zionism is essentially never anti-Semitic. The ADL's upstart competitors, such as the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anne Frank Center, are even more relentlessly ideological and partisan.