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dchan87 · 4 months ago

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A year ago today, Hamas butchered 1,200 Israelis, triggering a war in Gaza and another one across Western institutions, campuses, and social media. At American Dreaming, we’ve extensively covered the discourse post-10/7, from the depraved joy the “decolonize” left felt at news of Jews being slaughtered, to the obscene double standards imposed on Israel, to the explosion of full-blown leftist anti-Semitism. We’ve published articles about the young progressives who hate Biden and love bin Laden, the disturbing redefinition of “genocide”, and the absolutely unhinged Western pro-Palistinian activist movement. And after a year of discourse, one thing has been made crystal clear: the political left has an anti-Semitism problem. Everywhere I looked, over these past 12 months, far-left protestors not only tolerated but actively propagated centuries-old anti-Semitism, including celebrating the October 7th massacre and even praising Hitler. It was equal parts disgusting and confusing. How could a movement that, in theory, is supposed to oppose bigotry and racism have so openly embraced it? How did we end up with left-wingers attacking synagogues, creating lists of Zionists, canceling events with “Zionist” participants, defacing Anne Frank memorials, and protesting Israel outside of Auschwitz? How could only half of young adults, by far the most left-leaning age group, disagree with the statement “The Holocaust is a myth”? How did we get to a place where good progressives openly display swastikas, tell Jews to go back to Europe, express the desire to gas them, and perform Hitler salutes? The rhetoric was much the same as it had been for centuries: that Jews are violent, bloodthirsty, imposters — not even Semitic, but a bunch of Europeans playing pretend. Demonstrators held signs with a Star of David in a trash can next to the words “Keep the world clean.” Classic anti-Semitic tropes like the blood libel resurfaced. All of this happened within far-left movements, who now sound eerily like the far right. It’s no wonder that far rightists blend right in at pro-Palestine protests. But why? Integral to the left’s worldview, elaborate theory aside, is solidarity with the underprivileged, be it the poor, ethnic minorities, LGBT people, etc. Logically, the left should be sympathetic to the Jewish people, given their long history of persecution. At a glance, there should be no reason for the hard left to behave functionally the same as neo-Nazis. And yet they do.

Sadly, anti-Semitism, as one of humanity's oldest hatreds, has never been confined to any one ideology. To understand the history of left-wing anti-Semitism, we must first look back to before the concept of the political “left” even existed.

An Extremely Brief History of Anti-Semitism

In 132 CE, during the apex of Roman imperial power, the Bar Kokhba revolt broke out in the troublesome Roman-controlled province of Judea. Emperor Hadrian solved it with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. In an outright genocidal war, he utterly crushed Jewish resistance, slaughtering large numbers of Jewish civilians and devastating many towns and villages. The destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE tends to be more remembered by Jews themselves as the beginning of the diaspora, but the events of 135 were when the Jews truly lost their homeland. Although a small population remained, most fled throughout the Middle East or Europe.

Hadrian’s actions were not anti-Semitic per se — Rome was just as brutal to any rebellious subject — but it set the Jews up as a people without a land, a people with nowhere to go whose religion and customs made them visibly other. With the rise of Christianity, the relative religious tolerance typical to polytheistic societies faded away, and the Jews faced constant oppression, at best living as second-class citizens. Of course, Christians have a long history of treating their fellow devotees with murderous contempt if they happen to be the wrong kind of Christian. The massacres of the First Crusade that included Christians as well as Muslims and Jews, the expulsion of Protestants from France, the bloody Anglo-Irish conflict, the Anglican church's persecution of Puritans, and so on. Now imagine what it would mean to openly belong to another faith, one deemed heretical by the Church, the supreme arbiter of morality.

Jews were widely barred from “honest” work — leaving niches in fields considered less savory, like money lending, clerking, pawnbroking, and lawyering. Making the most of the niche they had been forced into by these discriminatory laws — although far from all Jews did such work — led in turn to the stereotype of Jews as greedy, bloodsucking parasites who hated and exploited honest Christians, which, of course, led to even more persecution. Jewish populations were expelled from countries multiple times, or faced savage butchery. There were the brutal Rhineland Massacres of the First Crusade in 1096 CE that saw 800 Jews killed, and expulsion from England in 1290, from France in 1306, and from Spain in 1492. It was a vicious cycle of violent intolerance.

The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same

In the late 1700s, the birth of European liberalism changed everything. The French Revolution and Napoleon both offered a greater level of religious tolerance toward Jews, making new inroads toward coexistence. After Napoleon’s downfall, despite a rightward reaction, Europe slowly began to liberalize, incorporate Enlightenment values, and move toward democracy. By and large, Jewish people naturally drifted leftward — the monarchist right wing of the 1800s was no friend to them. When socialism made strides decades later, Jews were an influential part of the movement, such as the Bund, a socialist Jewish party in Russia.

At the same time, many Jews were understandably fed up with the still-rampant anti-Semitism in Europe, and started to dream of returning to their ancestral homeland, and so began the seeds of modern Israel.

So far, Jews seemed like natural allies to the left, as an oppressed, marginalized underdog if ever there was one. But anti-Semitism is a powerful, deeply rooted force. Vladimir Lenin forcibly dissolved the Bund in 1921, and all those who did not join the Communist Party were forced to flee abroad or face persecution. It only got worse under Stalin, who systematically eradicated Jewish influence wherever he could find it. His Doctors Plot, in which Stalin invented false charges of treason and espionage toward nine doctors, seven of them Jewish, resembled nothing so much as a classic anti-Semitic purge. Indeed, between 1939 and 1941, the Soviet secret police deported tens of thousands of Jews to Siberia and Kazakhstan. Despite Marxism’s pretensions to antiracism, Soviet anti-Semitism, from Party leadership down to the common comrade, was pervasive, and often intertwined “anti-Zionism” with negative stereotypes about Jews.

It was not until after the Holocaust had been exposed to the world that anti-Semitism finally began to become unfashionable, as humanity took a cold, hard look at the logical conclusion to such hatred. But anti-Semitism did not disappear from either end of the political spectrum.

In the 1960s, James Baldwin explained the pronounced anti-Semitism among the black community in the US, which he tied to attitudes of anti-whiteness and an oppressor/oppressed mindset. In the 1970s, influenced by Soviet propaganda, which relentlessly demonized Zionism and Jews, the Australian Union of Students, dominated by young Trostkyites and Maoists, began following suit on Australian university campuses. When Jewish groups protested, they were physically assaulted.

The ferocious “anti-Zionism” of the Western “New Left” was widely seen as a cover for Jew hatred. In Germany, far-left groups in the 1960s and 70s celebrated the deaths of Israeli civilians in terrorist attacks, engaged in anti-Semitic violence, and schemed to bomb a synagogue. In the famous 1976 Entebbe Raid — in which pro-Palestine terrorists hijacked an Air France plane at gunpoint, then released the non-Jewish and non-Israeli passengers to hold the Israelis and Jews hostage — two of the hijackers were German leftists.

Today’s left ought to be unburdened by such bigotries, at least in theory. Unlike their forebears from previous eras, they did not grow up in a social environment where racism was normal and casual prejudice ubiquitous. The average modern far-leftist is highly educated, affluent, and conscious of systemic biases. They ought to know better. So why don’t they?

Like any complex phenomenon, it has no single explanation. Unlike the far right, which has anti-Semitism encoded into its ideological genetics, leftism is not inherently anti-Semitic. But in true horseshoe fashion, they nevertheless end up in the same place.

The Horseshoe of Anti-Semitism

First, the political far left shares an uncomfortable number of basic assumptions about reality with the far right. Both believe that:

A class of moneyed elites control the government, and democracy is a sham maintained by these vaguely defined, malicious elites.

Proper far-left or far-right beliefs (depending) would naturally take root in society if not for an aggressive campaign of materialist propaganda pushed by these shady elites to distract the masses from realizing their true destiny.

Their cause is one that is so vital and so obviously true that any approach to further it is legitimate, whether that means lying, propagandizing, or committing violence.

The liberal West is evil, degenerate, cruel, and exploitative, and must be crushed at all cost to realize this vision.

This antisocial, conspiratorial worldview is inherent to the far left, to a greater or lesser degree. Name a popular myth about how the West is evil, and a leftist will believe it — whether it’s that the US invaded Iraq to steal oil, or that all Western economies are built purely on the exploitation of developing countries, or that our media and government is controlled by sinister three-letter organizations. Such a mindset is incredibly vulnerable to conspiracy theory — and all conspiracy theories ultimately come back to anti-Semitism.

If you believe the government is controlled by moneyed elites and that the evil force of Zionism has its claws deep in the US government, then the leftist is already 90 percent of the way to being in full agreement with the Nazi. This is how we get university lecturers saying, “Zionists are straight Babylon swine [...] Zionism is beyond a mental illness; it’s a genocidal disease.” It’s how we get progressive screenwriters complaining that “the entertainment industry is ran [sic] by Zionists.” It’s how you get left-wing musicians like Eric Clapton saying, “Israel's running the show, running the world.”

Israel-Palestine is a Uniquely Sore Issue

Second, Israel-Palestine is singularly inflammatory. It takes every problematic tendency the far left already has — shallow performativity, radicalism, narcissism, subordinating truth to ideology, and viciousness toward perceived opponents — and dials it up to eleven. Palestine offers the leftist a classic oppressor-oppressed binary, one that fits the Marxist image of the world perfectly: a cruel, settler-colonialist nation, brutally oppressing a native population, neatly including a white-vs-brown layer of oppression. It also offers a religious layer, where Israel is painted as both a theocracy and a fascistic ethnostate no different from Nazi Germany.

Of course, there are many facts that one must ignore to believe these things. One must ignore that Israel began with legal land purchases, and that among both Israelis and Palestinians you can find people passing for white as well as people who would not. One must ignore that anti-Semitism is on the rise, and that 48 percent of Israel is of Mizrahi (meaning Middle Eastern) origin. One must ignore that Israel is a democracy with Arabs in its parliament, and that the Palestinians harbor many deeply regressive, misogynist, and homophobic values out of touch with modern progressivism.

The Left is Just Too Successful, But Still Needs a Revolution

Third, modern leftism is no longer the struggling worker’s movement it began as. In the early 1900s, the left struggled with real, material problems, such as genuinely unfair wages and labor power imbalances in which employers held all the cards. Protesting for better pay, fewer hours, and more benefits and vacation were real, concrete improvements to fight for. But with these and other battles won — with an eight-hour workday and five-day workweek, with vacation and sick days taken for granted, with LGBT acceptance and racial equality both legally enshrined and culturally mainstream, the modern left had to pivot. Their crusades became less about tangible change in the face of injustice, and more about an opportunity to display righteousness by advancing an incredibly shallow worldview divided between the morally pure and the wicked, with no in-betweens. The ethos of no bad tactics, only bad targets thereby became bad tactics and bad targets.

Jews Just Aren’t Oppressed Enough

Finally, the far left is captured by a narrative in which the underprivileged are the center of attention. There is a foundational leftist belief that the world right now is not only terrible, but actively getting worse due to capitalist exploitation. In this understanding of the world, everything is defined by class struggle between the wealthy, parasitic capitalists, and their victims, the workers, whose labor is exploited for pennies, deliberately keeping the lower classes down.

When taken to its logical end, we are left with a movement that resents success. So where do Jews fit into this? Well, from this grievance-focused, eternally victimized perspective, the Jewish people are just a bit too white, a bit too financially successful, and a bit too well-integrated to be seen as truly oppressed. Rather they are seen as oppressors. Just as Asians are now “helping white supremacy” because they’re more financially successful than other groups on average, Jews are just not persecuted enough. The far left resents success, and the Jews have shown extraordinary perseverance in their achievements. Indeed, the archetypal Jewish businessman, lawyer, or doctor fits perfectly into the petit-bourgeoisie stereotype the far left so intensely loathes.

What’s left is a movement deeply committed to performative role-playing while eschewing achievable goals, pragmatism, and principles. It’s a dreadful state of affairs. There ought to be room for a left-of-center movement to express a sane pro-Palestinian worldview, but it’s been hijacked by radicals who are as ignorant as they are venomous. Any healthy, open society requires a variety of perspectives represented, but they need to be rooted in reality — not collective guilt, group resentment, and unhinged conspiracism punctuated with Hitler salutes.

In the span of one year, the anti-Zionist far left has done serious and lasting damage to themselves. If they are to avoid becoming simply an inverted variant of neo-Nazism, utterly fringe and dismissed, they must reckon with and expel their radicals, not celebrate them. Is protesting Israel worth trafficking in old anti-Semitic tropes? Is it worth lowering yourself to the level of a fascist? Is it worth an entire political movement with over two hundred years of history? Because if things continue as they are, the left will be left behind, with all sane and decent people having shied away in disgust. Perhaps that’s one faint silver lining of this past year, that the radical left have lunged toward their far-right counterparts on the great trash heap of history. It’s where they belong.

#antisemitism #dirtbag left #israeli palestinian conflict #israel #substack #long article

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workersolidarity · 1 year ago

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🇹🇷🇵🇸 MASSIVE RALLY TODAY IN ISTANBUL, TURKIYE IN SOLIDARITY WITH PALESTINIANS UNDER SIEGE AND BOMBARDMENT IN GAZA

A massive rally of thousands of people standing in solidarity with Palestine is ongoing in Istanbul, Turkiye on Friday as Turkish President, Racep Tayyip Erdogan addressed the "Great Palestine Meeting" as it is being called.

The Turkish President invited the entire nation to join the rally to show their support for Palestinians suffering under Israeli occupation and bombardment. Erdogan called on the rally to show “brotherhood between Turks and Palestinians to the world.”

With Palestinian and Turkish flags waving in the crowds that, by some estimates, has reached over 1.5 million across Turkiye, Erdogan told the rally that Western nations were responsible for the current crisis in the Middle East.

"The main culprit behind the massacre unfolding in Gaza is the West," Erdogan told his nation. "If we leave aside some conscientious voices... the massacre in Gaza is entirely the work of the West."

Erdogan also accused Israel of acting as a "War Criminal."

"Of course, every country has the right to defend itself. But where is the justice in this case?"

In addition, Erdogan accused Western Countries of "shedding [crocodile] tears" over the deaths of Ukrainian civilians in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, while turning a blind-eye to the suffering and murder of Palestinians.

"We are against all these double standards and all these hypocrisies," Erdogan told the throngs gathered in support of Palestine.

Erdogan went on to accuse Israel's allies of creating a "crusade war atmosphere" to encourage conflict in the region.

"Listen to our call for dialogue," President Erdogan said. "No one loses from a just peace."

Aside from President Erdogan, various Turkish Party leaders, state authorities, and officials from different countries are expected to give remarks at the rally, along with representatives of the media, arts, sports, culture and business interests in Turkiye.

According to the updated figures on the war in Gaza, 7'703 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli air strikes and shelling, with more than 3'500 of those deaths among children. Another 17'000+ have been wounded.

#source

@WorkerSolidarityNews

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goldenhallyu · 9 months ago

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Why Sulli is one of my biggest inspirations

Hello i'd like to share some of the reasons why Sulli (aka Jinri) is one of my favorite people in the korean entertainment industry and why she is such an inspiring woman. I also provided links to several articles so you can read more in depth about certain amazing things she's done.

!Note that south korea is a highly conservative and misogynistic country. Especially in the idol industry, women are judged for every single little thing they do. Sulli however decided to lean against the standards set for female idols and always did as she pleased and what she thought was right. It's sad that only now after she passed netizens are being nice and supportive towards her. I'd like to share some of the reasons why she was such an inspirational woman and why she should never be forgotten!

1.Going Braless . Sulli didn't like wearing bras

and would often post pictures of herself while not wearing one. Of course this shouldn't be considered an issue at all but even western countries often still take offense to it fsm so obviously highly conservative korea was very unhappy about her decision and would send her lots of hate and call her vulgar names for it. She never stopped doing it though.

2. Abortion Rights

Sulli is pro choice! She celebrated South Korea changing their anti abortion laws which ofc was yet another reason for people to hate her.

3. Raised awareness on her public instagram about comofort women and showed her sympathy despite knowing she'll make her japanese fans upset by shedding light on it .

Japanese people often don't like to acknowlage their war crimes and felt very offended by Sulli for talking about it on her social media. Being the woman supporting feminist she is, she thought it was an important topic to discuss and posted about it regardless.

4. Openly shared her relationship

Dating is often completly banned for kpop idols altogether and only few dare to make their relationship public. Only in recent years have idols slowly starting sharing their relationship status. But back then idols tried their absolute hardest to hide that they're dating in fear of facing MASSIVE backlash, sometimes even receiving death threats. Yet Sulli openly posted photos of her and her now ex boyfriend on her instagram like any other normal person would.

5. Openly expressed her sexuality

making her own choices on when or how she decides to be sexy, taking all power from netizens sexualizing her against her will. This is a big issue in the idol industry, especially due to conservative views, a woman openly showing herself to be a self empowered sexual individual is looked down upon and seen as offensive. Netizens often called her mentally unstable, dirty, nasty and a wh*re for simply not wearing a bra or showing cleavage (which is quite scandalous in korea) or taking sexy photos as an adult woman! She talked about this and the double standards in depth in Persona:Sulli!

6. Defended herself

It's very rare for idols to stand up for themselves especially in such a blunt, forward way. Usually when idols have to apologize for the most mundane stuff, an official apology is issued through the agency but Sulli always took matters into her own hands.

7. Endured a massive amount of hate and ultimately left f(x) for the sake of protecting herself from hate and persuing her true artistic visions

She was constantly harrassed from her "attitude" to her looks, her views, her behavior and her talents.

8. Publicly discussed mental health, inlcuding her own struggles,

and based her solo debut around DiD. Mental Health was and still is very stigmatised in South Korea. While it's slowly changing, talking about such things back then was seen as highly controversial and people wouldn't be very understanding at all. Moreover netizens would think of idols to be ungrateful if they'd ever talked about their struggles.

9. Just overall always supported women and their rights. (girls supporting girls shirt, talked about being a feminist and wanting women to be equal on tv and defending fellow female idols).

Again, with Korea being a very conservative and sexist country, people sent her a massive amount of hate (mostly men) for speaking up about womens rights. This still happens to other female idols today when they declare themselves to be feminists.

10. Was unapoligeticly herself no matter what.

Always showing her personality and interests and voicing her opinions. She loved showing everyone how fun loving and free spirited she is . All she ever wanted was to be loved by others but she still didn't want to change her identity for others to do so.

11. Loved herself and her beauty

and would also voice it yet she was never arrogant or felt like she was better than anyone because she's pretty (Persona:Sulli)

12. She critizised the idol industry and the publics treatment towards idols (see Persona:Sulli)

13. Sent a low income student a feminine hygiene package for free

and planned to regulary send out packages to girls who couldn't afford to buy these products themselves. Unfortunatly she passed away before she had the chance to do so.

Theres so much more to Sulli. But these are some of the main points as to why I love her so much.

She endured the tremendous amount of hate for such a long time and despite feeling hurt she always remained true to herself. She struggled a lot but always continued doing what she thought was right and didn't apologize for simply living her life and being a feminist.

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thebusylilbee · 3 months ago

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A United Nations legal expert has called for Western media to be investigated over their role in “obscuring” news coverage of the clashes on Friday between Israeli forces posing as football fans and locals in the Dutch city of Amsterdam.

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, said that Western media has repeatedly disseminated disinformation which has served to conceal the atrocities that were being carried out by the Israelis across the globe.

“Once again, Western media should be investigated for the role they are playing in obscuring Israel’s atrocities,” the Italian international lawyer said.

The legal scholar, researcher, and author specializing in human rights and Arab refugee issues said media figures who disseminate false news are complicit in Israeli crimes and should be held accountable.

“In other contexts, international tribunals have found media figures responsible for complicity, incitement, and other international crimes.”

The call by the UN expert came after some Western media outlets failed to report on or minimize the actions of the Israeli thugs posing as fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv ahead of and during the violence on Thursday and Friday.

Israeli thugs travelling to Amsterdam as football fans wage chaos and vandalism in the Dutch capital by committing acts of anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab violence.

Upon arriving at the Dutch capital ahead of the match, videos online showed so-called Israeli football fans tearing down Palestinian flags hung from residents’ homes.

In one video from the clashes, Israeli fans were heard singing, “Let the [Israeli army] win, and f*** the Arabs!” while another showed them tearing down a Palestinian flag from a building.

Maccabi faced Eredivisie side Ajax Amsterdam on Thursday, where they were thrashed 5-0 by the Dutch team in the city’s main arena and Ajax’s home stadium.

The impudent Israeli regime forces' brutal instincts intensified outside the Johan Cruyff Arena after the match, spreading to other areas, and inflicting heavy damage to the Dutch city.

Western media, however, cited pro-Israeli officials describing the clashes as “anti-Semitic” and claiming Israeli hooligans had been attacked for their “Jewishness.”

Six Israeli airplanes were dispatched to bring the hundreds of Israeli forces in Amsterdam back to Tel Aviv following the riots in the Dutch capital triggered by their racist behavior, reports said.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Mossad spy agency were involved in the events.

Israel acts with impunity with the complicity of the United States, says the Cuban ambassador to Tehran, adding that every moment of impunity for action, passivity, double standards or silence will cost more innocent lives in the besieged Gaza Strip.

During the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, human rights advocacy groups had called for barring the Israelis from all sports events over the ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) about the occupying regime’s barbaric crimes against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip amid the Israelis ongoing genocidal war in the region, killing over 43,500 Palestinians.

Hundreds of Palestinian athletes have been killed since October 7, 2023, when the regime began waging the war in Gaza which it now extended to Lebanon.

Western governments’ support for the Israeli war machine and indifference to human life is the source of the Zionists' continued impunity, experts say.

#zionism #israel #palestine #free palestine #amsterdam #netherlands #racism #anti-arab racism #bee tries to talk #francesca albanese #un

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callimara · 1 year ago

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As someone who hates violence from the bottom of my heart and always though that peaceful resolutions for conflicts is the best thing to do, I can't genuinely believe how non-palestinian people want them to resolve this only with peace.

Like, in the past they tried to do things by the name of peace and pacifism only for getting slaughtered by the IDF. If peace didn't work back then, it would NOT work again.

EXACTLY!!!

I'm so sick of western media asking Palestinian reps why they couldn't have protested peacefully WHEN THEY LITERALLY DID, YOU GUYS JUST DIDN'T COVER IT!!!

Why is it that when Ukraine fights back against Russia and anti-Russian sentiments among Ukrainians civilians are high, they have a psychologist say that hate is a completely normal and healthy response to oppression, but when it's Palestinians fighting back against Israel, they're called violent and barbaric and need to be more "civilized"?

The double standards are double-standarding.

#free palestine #from the river to the sea palestine will be free #stop the genocide

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eretzyisrael · 6 months ago

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by Melanie Phillips

he outspoken chief rabbi of South Africa, Dr. Warren Goldstein, has once again given voice to crucial truths that others have shamefully ignored.

He accused both Pope Francis and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, of being indifferent to the murder of black Christians in Africa and the terrorism threat in Europe while being “outright hostile” to Israel’s attempts to battle jihadi forces led by Iran.

“The world is locked in a civilizational battle of values, threatened by terrorism and violent jihad,” said Goldstein. “At a time when Europe’s very future hangs in the balance, its two most senior Christian leaders have abandoned their most sacred duty to protect and defend the values of the Bible. Their cowardice and lack of moral clarity threaten the free world.”

Goldstein’s blistering accusations were on the mark.

Christians in Africa have been subjected to barbaric slaughter and persecution by Islamists for decades. Two years ago, Open Doors, an organization that supports persecuted Christians, observed: “In truth, there are very few Muslim countries—or countries with large Muslim populations—where Christians can avoid intimidation, harassment or violence.”

In January 2024, a report for Genocide Watch confirmed that, since 2000, 62,000 Christians in Nigeria have been murdered by Islamist groups in an ongoing attempt to exterminate Christianity. In addition, more than 32,000 moderate black Nigerian Muslims and non-faith individuals have been massacred.

According to a report in 2020 by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, Christians in Myanmar, China, Eritrea, India, Iran, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Vietnam are being persecuted.

These facts were reported in June by Peter Baum for The Daily Blitz. Yet the mainstream media all but ignore these atrocities. There are no marches in Western cities to accuse these countries of facilitating crimes against humanity. There are no NGO-inspired petitions to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to declare these countries and groups guilty of genocide.

Instead, the media and Western elites demonize Israel as the pariah of the world for defending itself against these genocidal Islamists. This unique and egregious double standard is the hallmark of classic antisemitism.

The attitude of the church leaders is even more astonishing. The hundreds of thousands of victims of this persecution are their flock. The goal of this onslaught is the wholesale destruction of the faith they lead.

Yet from Welby and the pope have emerged little more than occasional expressions of measured concern. And even then, they usually refuse to call out what’s happening by its proper name—the Islamist war to eradicate Christianity and destroy the West.

The 10-month war against Israel by Iran and its proxies following the Oct. 7 pogrom is a crucial front in that onslaught against Western civilization. Yet as Goldstein said, the pope and Welby have stood passively by while African Christians are “butchered by jihadi groups with direct ties to Israel’s enemies in Gaza and the West Bank.”

The jihadi ideology, he said, was also a clear and present danger to Europe. As a result of open-border policies, immigrants poured into the United Kingdom and across Europe, many of them “brandishing a violent jihadi ideology deeply hostile to Christianity, liberal democracy and western values.”

The result has been surging antisemitism leaving Diaspora Jews living in fear. Yet on the ideology fueling this civilizational onslaught, Welby and the pope have been silent. Instead, they have recycled the Islamists’ propaganda that demonizes and delegitimizes Israel with lies.

#dr warren goldstein #chief rabbi of south africa #the pope #jihadi ideology #justin welby #archbishop of canterbury #israel #international court of justice

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999-roses · 1 year ago

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hey, there. you might have missed it, but the Harvard study linked above also cross-compared political satisfaction in different countries. Specifically the context: China has exceptionally high political satisfaction (moreso at the federal level than municipal/local), while the complete opposite is true (US has one of the lowest political satisfaction, albeit lower with federal level and higher at municipal/local).

I think it was an appropriate reply to, specifically, your claim that "do you think most countries' populations are super into their governments and the stuff they do? Cause like. That is almost universally untrue afaik." Dismissing that reply to "I don't actually care about satisfaction, this isn't relevant" reads to me like you're unwilling to engage in filling in information you didn't know before, and people were engaging you with your own qualifications about universality/satisfaction. (Sidenote: I think the reasons why people revolt have more to do with if they think they can continue to get by or not, which is related but not the same as "satisfaction".)

No, I don't think 'revolt' is a good measuring stick for indictment/approval of a government, but I don't think 'how "moral" a government is' is a useful quality to measure either. Moralizing may precede appropriate action, but it does not guarantee any concrete policy or action to be enacted. Democrats moralized about abortion rights getting flushed down the toilet WHILE they had incumbent POTUS AND majority in both houses of legislature, yet they made the same tired excuse that a few assholes on their team would have stymied their efforts to pass anything... instead their actions regarding abortion rights was to ask for donations and fund-raise off of the "loss" and act like the next time they would have the opportunity to be in the "power" seat would be any different. A better qualia to judge governments is their effectiveness: can it determine the most important issues, can it move swiftly and effectively to solve them, and does the action of the government positively affect the people it's meant to serve, and if not, who is it benefiting? Covid policies is an easy comparison, in this case, the US gov did do something but ultimately it did not prioritize civilian lives, and as the pandemic dragged on, it prematurely claimed that covid is no longer a problem.

These aren't for you to answer out loud, but stuff I hope for you to think about: How is it that western media maintains that China is a totalitarian surveillance-police state, yet, surveillance (particularly of note is erosion of privacy protections which makes it easier for companies & NSA &c to track more and more of your data, from what you see to what you say to where you are, they don't need facial id for any of this already) and protest suppression and police violence are all supposedly uniquely brutal and extremely frequent in the west? How can these conflicting narratives be simultaneously maintained?? How does "human rights" accusations halfway across the globe fit into maintaining this narrative? Does it throw heat off the accuser? Do call-outs give the reader an impression that the one who is making the call-out is more just? that they are a champion, perhaps a savior, for people they paint as victims? What do you make of the accuser, especially if the "facts" they present you are built on half-truths or bad data (low sample size, extra 0s added in) or even blatant lies twisted into atrocity propaganda? Should you hold the same overarching narratives when confronted that maybe one pillar holding it up is made of paper and not stone? Should you examine other pillars, also assumed as solid and factual, or just wait until the roof caves in?

["]He's a dictator in the sense that he's a guy who runs a country that is a communist country that's based on a form of government totally different than ours," Biden said.

China Different Therefore China Bad [16 Nov 23]

#I don't 'blame' you for taking in sinophobic atrocity propaganda as credible as it's what you're constantly exposed to if u live in the west #but you've followed me for a while so I'm a bit surprised that you may have somehow completely missed my reblogs&commentary about #western media having a completely sinophobic narrative and thus affecting public perception about China being 'human rights abuser' etc #like it's something I frequently tag about sinophobia & western media having double standards.. && it's not like I infrequently #share posts dispelling western-made myths -atrocity propaganda!- about tiananmen 'massacre' or various minority 'genocides' either.#if you have more specific questions I can try to link you to more reading-it will have better sourcing&refs than just me talking from memor #btw for those ?s:@the current moment I think Biden calling Xi a 'dictator' is trying to throw heat off of Biden's support of Zionist Israel #sinophobia #chen yells at clouds. more at 10

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baiwu-jinji · 11 months ago

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Dug up a very old paper I wrote almost 6 years ago titled "Tianyuan Feminism and Women in Contemporary China," putting it here if anyone's interested in reading this verbose thing:

Zhonghua tianyuan nüquan, which literally translates to “Chinese rural feminism,” is a term that became popular on the Chinese internet in recent years. It should be noted that the phrase nüquan, meaning “feminism,” is used ironically and negatively within the term, as the zhonghua tianyuan nüquan represents a set of beliefs contrary to feminist ideals. Also, zhonghua tianyuan, meaning “Chinese rural,” does not indicate the rural areas of China, but as is generally agreed by Internet users, refers to a breed of domestic dogs indigenous to China. Therefore, “Chinese rural” really signifies the indigeneity of the concept. The phrase tianyuan, which means “rural,” can also refer to an idyllic countryside far from the scenes of buzzling life, and its implication of utopian impracticality leads to some people’s interpretation of tianyuan as “empty talk with no practical results” (Du, “A Reinless Wild Horse in the Age of New Media”). For the sake of brevity, I will refer to zhonghua tianyuan nüquan as “tianyuan feminism” in my following analysis. I will discuss the meaning of tianyuan feminism, its indigeneity, the possible reasons for the rise of such phenomenon, and people’s usages of and responses to the term.

What is tianyuan feminism?

In a discussion board titled “what’s the definition of tianyuan feminism?” on Zhihu, one of the most popular online forums in China, a top comment that received over eight hundred likes defines tianyuan feminism as thus:

Tianyuan feminism is a freak born of the hybrid of the remnants of Chinese feudalism and Western consciousness of individual rights. These women have no idea what feminism is. They want the benefits of Western idea of equality, but neither are they willing to let go of traditional gender notions. This double standard is, in essence, a form of utilitarian selfishness and greed […] Only the unique social and cultural environment of China can give rise to such grotesque “feminists” who ask men to provide for the family like women in Japan and Korea do, but also try to get away with responsibilities by evoking the ideas of personal freedom and rights like women in Western societies[1].

While the commenter did not specify what responsibilities these women try to avoid, many of the male internet users who complain about their girlfriends or wives being “tianyuan feminists” list the shirking of economic responsibilities by the women as the primary problem. More specifically, women labeled “tianyuan feminists” would demand that their male partners pay for everything either on dates or within a marriage – which include the wedding, the house, the cars, and other daily expenses; they would push men to earn more in order to amply provide for themselves, and would chastise their male partners if they fail to do so. The underlying logic of such practice is that women are the weaker sex oppressed within the patriarchal system, therefore they should be compensated and taken care of, meaning that all responsibilities go to men. One of the main arguments used by tianyuan feminists is that women have done their essential part in marriage by giving birth to children; since they have made their main contribution through childbirth, men should take up all other responsibilities. One can see at a glance that tianyuan feminism is the opposite of what real feminism stands for: by shoving all economic responsibilities onto men, tianyuan feminists deny their own potential to excel professionally and achieve economic self-sufficiency, and by seeing their greatest value in giving birth to children, they objectify themselves and ignore their innate self-worth. It is not self-esteem, self-fulfillment, independence, or equality that they strive for, but material benefits and superior treatment from the other sex. Tianyuan feminists have internalized the idea of feminine inferiority, and instead of challenging the patriarchal system, they try to exploit it to their own advantage.

Tianyuan Feminism versus Feminism

The curious thing is perhaps that tianyuan feminism is associated with feminism at all. Unlike the principles of human rights and equality upon which feminism is built, tianyuan feminism devalues both men and women by objectifying and commodifying them, and as one commenter on Zhihu crudely but vividly describes tianyuan feminism: “the man keeps the woman like a pet, and the woman sees the man as an ATM machine” (Zhihu Journal: Women’s Rights Equals Human Rights 63).

However, tianyuan feminism is associated with feminism because, first of all, tianyuan feminists demand rights as feminists do, although they do so from the premise of accepting the patriarchal system and their gendered inferiority. While by definition tianyuan feminism is a form of “false feminism” or mockery of feminism, many Chinese internet users genuinely confuse tianyuan feminism with real feminism, and even consider tianyuan feminism to be a branch of feminism. This confusion leads to further stigmatization of feminism on the internet, adding the accusations toward tianyuan feminism such as “selfish,” “materialistic,” and “unreasonable” to the already proliferating vilifications of real feminism. It also reflects a trend of thought on the internet which conveniently attributes every objectionable behavior or mentality of women to the influence of feminism. As Chinese scholar Dong Jing notes in her article:

If women says things that are too ‘radical,’ it is at the instigation of feminism; if women ride roughshod over men, it is because of the ‘cancerous’ influence of feminism; and if women do not wish to apply themselves in work, and ask men for financial support instead, the fault is with feminism again, and such women are called ‘feminist sluts’ with double standard – it is as if women are led astray all because of feminism. (Dong, “Don’t Yell ‘Feminism is Cancer’ if You Don’t Understand Feminism”)

The confusion of tianyuan feminism with feminism stems from people’s limited and often biased understanding of feminism in China. Feminist ideas were introduced into China at the end of the nineteenth century, but as Li Yue observes, “Throughout the hundred years between its emergence and the present, feminist movement in China has always lacked theoretical explorations and guidance, and Western feminist movements have had very limited influence on feminist movement in China” (Li, “A Comparison of the Development of Western and Chinese Feminist Movements and Their Emergence”). The peripheral status of feminism in China means that issues and ideas associated with feminism have never received sufficient attention or clarification.

Feminism in China took roots during a series of social reform movements starting from the late nineteenth century, such as the Hundred Days’ Reform and May Fourth Movement, which introduced Western ideas of human rights, democracy and equality into China. During that time, women activists such as Tang Qunying and Qiu Jin actively participated in revolutionary movements and demanded political rights for women, while in the literary field, “protofeminist contestations of women’s identity” began to develop “in the writings of women like Zhang Ailing, Lu Yin, Shi Pingmei, and Ding Ling, who has been called ‘the founder of modern Chinese feminism’” (Schaffer and Song, “Unruly Spaces: Gender, Women’s Writing and Indigenous Feminism in China”). However, a fully-fledged women’s movement never took shape, either during the turbulent revolutionary times of the early twentieth century or in the following hundred years. Women like Tang Qunying and Qiu Jin were exceptions in a male-dominated political landscape, as much as is the case now in the Chinese political scene, where “no woman has ever ascended to the elite Politburo Standing Committee, the small cabinet that effectively runs the country in concert with the president,” and where “the pattern of under-representation ripples down through the entire political system” (Cunningham, “Good Girls Revolt: The Future of Feminism in China”).

Besides its peripherality, women’s movement in China never achieved independent status, but has always been seen in association with the larger social and political context. Xu Jiaqing and Li Xi comment on women’s liberation movement in China during the last century that “women’s liberation movement in China has always been led and guided by Chinese men, and is closely linked to China’s social revolutions and constructions. Men were the first to realize, on the social level, the oppression and abuse of women by the feudal tradition, and consequently put forward the slogan of ‘equality between men and women’” (Xu and Li, “Feminism in Chinese and Western Contexts”). The situation has not essentially changed in contemporary China. In their 2007 article “Unruly Spaces: Gender, Women’s Writing and Indigenous Feminism in China”, Kay Schaffer and Song Xianlin note that “the movement towards women’s equality is linked to China’s ‘carefully propagated self-image of socialist modernity at the heart of China’s drive for progress and sovereignty” (Schaffer and Song). If one visits the official website of All-China Women’s Federation (ACWF), the state sanctioned women’s rights organization, one can see that the front page is occupied by the slogan written in big red letters “Women Heroes Turn Their Hearts to the Communist Party, Making Contributions to Building the New Era.” Women’s liberation and enlightenment is linked to, and ultimately serves China’s economic progress and modernization, while women’s individual rights and self-fulfillment are attributed little importance.

The marginalization and virtually absence of women’s movement and feminist thinking obviously do not help the public to understand and sympathize with the feminist cause, and has contributed to the bizarre situation where, while terms such as nüquan zhuyi (the Chinese translation of “feminism”) and tianyuan feminism are freely and casually used, discussed, and debated on countless occasions across the internet, little action is taken in real life to promote the feminist cause or propagate women’s rights. “Feminism” as a concept seems to be emptied of its innards, or substance as it were, and cannot find a solid foothold in people’s lives or their intellectual understanding. Consequently, vague, misrepresented, or even libelous descriptions of the term “feminism” float around the internet, and become conflated with people’s criticisms of tianyuan feminism, creating a larger stigmatized image of nüquan zhuyi that is at once messy, confusing, and intimidating. As Wang Lan explains in her article “The Spread of Feminism in the New Media Environment:”

Due to the highly open and accessible nature of new media, the varied degrees of enlightenment of its users and the slow development of feminism at one time in our country, the state of unchecked spread of feminist ideas in recent years leads feminism in China to exhibit a ‘Year Zero temperament.’ Some women have rather biased misunderstandings of feminism, others try to avoid responsibilities in the name of feminism, giving rise to ‘tianyuan feminism’ which stresses personal rights but shuns obligations. Due to the spread of this erroneous ‘feminist’ thinking, many people developed an aversion to feminism even before they can get to know what feminism is truly like. (Wang, “The Spread of Feminism in the New Media Environment”)

While tianyuan feminism may have started out as ironic criticisms of beliefs and practices contrary to true feminist ideals, it has sometimes been subsumed under feminism due to people’s insufficient knowledge in and misunderstanding of both nüquan zhuyi and tianyuan feminism. Many internet users express the belief that nüquan zhuyi (or feminism), just like tianyuan feminism, possess the central tenet of exploiting men and serving women’s self-interest. This state of affairs is apparently detrimental to the development of feminism in China. As a commenter on Zhihu insightfully remarks, “considering that feminism in China has not yet taken shape, and that there aren’t so many feminists in China yet, to throw around labels such as tianyuan feminism and false feminism could strangle feminism in the cradle[2].”

Women’s condition in contemporary China

In this section I would like to explore the reasons that may have led to the rise of tianyuan feminism. While tianyuan feminists are characterized as materialistic and self-serving, one main reason for it is probably the financial and social insecurities that women in contemporary China face, as Schaffer and Song observe:

The market-driven reforms and Open Door policy have had more negative effects both materially and symbolically for women. The reforms offered men increased opportunities in education, employment and financial success. Women, however, had to face the dilemma of choosing between the demands of a career or a family. (Schaffer and Song, “Unruly Spaces: Gender, Women’s Writing and Indigenous Feminism in China”)

Workplaces are often more willing to employ men because women’s pregnancy delays work progress, and many women leave their jobs after giving birth, making them a destabilizing factor at the workplace. Besides workplace discrimination that makes it harder for women to find employment, women who give up jobs to take care of their children become financially dependent upon men.

Besides women’s financial insecurity, traditional gender discrimination against women accentuates their social insecurity. The traditional saying “a daughter that is married off is like spilled water” accurately reflects the mentality of many Chinese families who see a married woman as belonging to and subsumed under her husband’s family and dependent upon her husband, and is no longer part of her original family. This means that it is harder for women than men to gain financial and emotional support both from her parents and from her in-laws.

The economic and social vulnerability of women contributes to some women’s desperate determination to seek financial security and guarantees of material comfort from the most convenient and apparent source – their male partners (a defining trait of tianyuan feminists). While women’s financial and social independence is another route, it is not necessarily encouraged by society. After women’s liberation in the early twentieth century and the “iron-girls” of Maoist era who actively participated in socialist constructions, the present market economy, where “the collusion between capital, patriarchy and state is hardly rare” (Song, “Is Chinese Feminist Thoughts Abducted by Western Theories?”), sees a return of women to the traditional gender role of wife, mother, and beautiful object. According to Tania Angeloff and Marylène Lieber,

The move from a planned to a market economy had significant consequences on the evolution of inequalities between the sexes. While the Maoist state (1949-1976) sought – at least in official discourse and employment policy – to eradicate inequalities between men and women and their adherence to pre-communist traditions, the reform and opening policies adopted in the late 1970s were largely built on the traditional representations of women’s role in the family and in society. (Angeloff and Lieber, “Equality, Did You Say? Chinese Feminism After 30 Years of Reforms”)

All-China Women’s Federation (ACWF), which voices the state’s view on women’s rights, also tilts the public opinion toward seeing women in their traditional role – that is, within the family. An article published on the ACWF website on October 29, 2018 quotes president Xi Jinping saying “we should stress women’s unique role in promoting China’s traditional familial virtues” and “women around the country should voluntarily shoulder the responsibilities of taking care of elderly family members and educating children, as well as upholding familial virtues[3];” another article on the website, published on November 13, 2018 titled “Shao Yanlin’s Family: Good Wife Setting Positive Example by Looking After Sick Father-in-law” details the life of Shao Yanlin, who takes care of her father-in-law with laryngeal cancer, and is rewarded the title of “the good wife of Gu-lu-ben-jin Village[4].”

The aforementioned workplace discrimination and women’s internalized perception of their dependent status and essential role as wife and mother is reflected in a national survey conducted in 2010:

The Third Survey of Women’s Social Status in China in 2010 shows that almost 62% men and 55% women believe that “men belong to the public life, while women belong to the family,” with the percentages rising 7.7 and 4.4 percent compared to 2000; at the same time, wage gap is broadening. In urban areas, the average yearly income of women is only 67.3% of that of men, and the percentage is 56% in rural areas, with the percentages dropping 10.2% and 23% compared to 1990. (Liu, “‘Crazy Women:’ From Version 1.0 to 2.0”)

It is not only the governmental opinion that leads to a regressive view of women’s place in society, but the popular media as well. As Liu Jin argues,

From the images incessantly constructed by the media of women as traditional good wives and good mothers or modern ladies valued for their pretty faces, we can smell the rotten and outdated values and gender notions that should have been eliminated. Media’s portrayal of women unconsciously influences its audience’s (including female audience’s) perception of women: that women are meant to do housework and sacrifice their careers for family, and that it is in their nature to bear and raise children. This prevalent view, attitude or prejudice means that men keep their dominant social position and women’s status is weakened. (Liu, “The Construction and Subversion of Popular Internet Term ‘Straight Man Cancer’”)

The media and the consumerist market not only promote the idea of women’s retreat into traditional family roles and female objectification, but also harmfully encourage women to seek self-value in material possessions and self-objectification. Advertisements and promotional texts from companies that sell luxury and fashion products are often identified by internet users as sources of information that foster a tianyuan feminist mentality. These advertisements and texts tell women that they deserve to treat themselves better, that the products they buy reflect their own beauty and sophistication. In this way, women are encouraged to over spend, and consequently often turn to their boyfriends or husbands for money.

We can see that in contemporary China, women are still beset with gender inequalities, economic and social disadvantages and pernicious and outdated gender notions. While these factors should not justify tianyuan feminism, they do contribute to its emergence as a social phenomenon.

Usages of and Reactions to Tianyuan Feminism

I have discussed how tianyuan feminism can be mistaken as one kind of feminism by some internet users who have misunderstandings about the subject, and can serve to further stigmatize feminism. On the other hand, more enlightened internet users have tried to clarify the difference, in fact the clear opposition between tianyuan feminism and feminism, and explain that feminism does not stand for gender superiority or women’s exploitation of men, but can actually help create a win-win situation for both sexes where there is shared responsibility and mutual respect, and neither sex need to suffer gender stereotypes and their accompanying social expectations.

Due to the fact that tianyuan feminism is a popular internet term with no traceable origin and no authoritative definition, and have passed through the hands of countless internet users, it is by nature sensational and ambiguous, and have picked up a complex host of connotations, implications and associations along the way. From Du Yunfei’s definition of tianyuan feminism in his article on tianyuan feminism, one can glimpse the confusing assortment of conceptions that tianyuan feminism has come to represent:

The group identified as tianyuan feminists on media platforms usually exhibit the following immoderate qualities: firstly, they detest men and patriarchal power, and when discussing topics of gender inequality, they aim their criticisms at men under all circumstances; secondly, they want to enjoy personal rights without undertaking obligations, and consider themselves to naturally possess moral high ground in society, at work, in the family and in relationships between the two sexes due to their biological inferiority; thirdly, they hate traditional gender roles, especially those that demand self-sacrifice for the sake of marriage or family, and they disapprove docile, beautiful and family-oriented women who are perfect in the traditional sense; fourthly, they have extremist attitudes and give radical speeches, and overexaggerate the unfavorable conditions in which Chinese women live.” (Du, “A Reinless Wild Horse in the Age of New Media”)

The four definitions put together can hardly describe one single type of woman: while the woman of the second definition is passive and dependent, the woman described in the other three definitions is angry, extreme and men-hating. We can see that besides being used to refer to women who believe they have every right to leech off the patriarchal system, tianyuan feminism has also come to represent extreme and men-hating speech and behavior. On other occasions, tianyuan feminism has been used as a generic insult to women with feminist tendencies, or even used to demonize feminism. For example, some internet users believe that tianyuan feminism is feminism in its extreme and irrational form that aim to exterminate all men and establish a matriarchal society. Other times, tianyuan feminism is linked with issues of race and sexuality: some see Chinese women who prefer wealthy white men to Asian men as tianyuan feminists; others claim that tianyuan feminists have a particular hatred for straight men but leave gay men alone. When browsing the internet, it is easy to get lost among the endless arguments, assertions and heated discussions, which, nevertheless, reminds one of the connotation of the phrase tianyuan mentioned at the beginning of this paper: “empty talk with no practical results.” The enthusiastic debates about tianyuan feminism and feminism online forms an ironic and stark contrast to the silence and inaction regarding the issues of women’s rights and social conditions in real life. While discussions about feminism on the internet can help raise awareness on the subject, Chinese women and the Chinese society have a long way to go in defending women’s rights and fostering the ideas of gender equality, self-respect and self-worth in women.

[1] See Zhihu discussion board (https://www.zhihu.com/question/266449349/answer/439864556).

[2] See Zhihu discussion board (https://www.zhihu.com/question/266449349/answer/439864556).

[3] See online article (http://www.women.org.cn/art/2018/10/29/art_19_158955.html).

[4] See online article (http://www.women.org.cn/art/2018/11/13/art_19_159188.html).

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royal-confessions · 1 year ago

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“I may not be her biggest fan but Rania spoke straight up facts on CNN. The GLARING DOUBLE STANDARD is what is infuriating.” - Submitted by Anonymous

““Are we being told that it is wrong to kill a family at gunpoint, but it’s okay to shell them to death?” Very well said, Queen Rania 👏 👏 👏” - Submitted by Anonymous

“Queen Rania was right in her CNN interview and she should say it! !” - Submitted by Anonymous

“There’s a lot I can’t stand about rania….but I like her interview with CNN she hit hard at western media for the Israeli bias and stood her ground..,honestly I’ve never seen her that worked up before. Hope to see more actual opinions from rania!” - Submitted by Anonymous

“Respect to Queen Rania for speaking out about the innocent Palestinian civilians who have died as a result of the current war. She's a woman with a big heart because she was able to say this to a huge audience, including the West.” - Submitted by Anonymous

#Queen Rania #popular

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 9 months ago

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By: Sam Harris

Published: May 13, 2024

This is a transcript of a recorded podcast.

* * *

Well, I suppose I should say something about the campus protests. There is a lot of anger and confusion out there. Just how much of a problem is this?

There is no question that much of the chaos we see online is performative—which is to say that it’s being staged for the cameras. That doesn’t mean that it is entirely insincere. But it is interesting to consider whether the events themselves would have happened, or happened at this scale, and have this character, absent an ability to broadcast them on social media.

Of course, this concern relates to far more than what is happening on college campuses in response to the war in Gaza. The combination of a smartphone and social media appears to be driving our species crazy. We’re all effectively walking around with a television studio in our pockets. And the question is, what is this doing to us?

So, this is just to say that when I see video of crowds of very smug and very hostile kids at our finest universities, effectively supporting Hamas, I’m a little slow to conclude that this tells me everything I need to know about the scope of the problem. As I’ve said before, the entire aftermath of October 7th has convinced me that I have been almost totally asleep to the current reality of antisemitism. So I do think it is a far bigger problem than I realized. But I still don’t know how informative it is to see a video of some imbecile at Columbia or Harvard shouting for the Jews to “go back to Poland.”

What I can say is that the response of these universities has been totally inadequate and hypocritical. Their policies around protests have clearly been violated and have been for months. And, as many people have pointed out, it’s the obvious double standard here that constitutes antisemitism. I’m less worried about the specifics of each ugly incident than I am about the fact that the administrations have been tolerating behavior that they simply would not tolerate had the objects of all this derision and abuse been anyone else. If these colleges had any number of people shouting that blacks should go back to Africa, or that trans people deserve to die, these students (to say nothing of professors who said such things) would be expelled. And this is clearly what should happen to the most uncivil actors here. All the kids who have been physically preventing Jewish students from accessing buildings on campus, threatening them with violence, simply because they are Jewish, should be expelled. Without question.

Even if you concede that Israel is totally in the wrong, this would not justify the behavior we’ve been seeing on campus. Imagine that China was doing something awful and worthy of protest—which, of course, China often is. It has put 2 million Uyghurs and Turkic Muslims in concentration camps, where they are reportedly subjected to torture, and sterilization, and forced labor. Where are the protests? Apparently, no one cares. Not a peep out of Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, or Yale. But let’s say that all these activist students started caring about China’s abuse of their Muslim population and were protesting that. Imagine how the universities would respond if these protestors started targeting other students on campus, just because they happen to be Chinese—as though ethnically Chinese Americans or even Chinese nationals at Harvard could be culpable for what the Chinese government was now doing. Imagine them not letting Chinese students access buildings. This would be immediately recognized to be morally insane, and at odds with every core value of a university, and there would be zero tolerance for it.

But the analogy actually understates the perversity of what’s been happening—because many of these students are not merely protesting injustice and cruelty and innocent death, and just happen to be harassing the wrong people. Rather, many of them are supporting injustice and cruelty and innocent death, explicitly. “Globalize the Intifada” isn’t a call for peace; it’s a call for the indiscriminate murder of Jews. I’m willing to cut college kids a fair amount of slack, but you mean to tell me that students at Harvard and Princeton and Stanford don’t know that Palestinian intifadas entail a fair amount of suicidal terrorism and the deliberate murder of noncombatants? (The deliberate murder of noncombatants.) I might have been confused about a few things when I was 19, but I was never that confused.

How did the kids get this turned around? Well, there are many reasons, but here is one: Qatar, the petrostate, has given tens of billions of dollars to US, Canadian, and British universities. Qatar has given more money to western universities than any other country on Earth. The regime that controls Qatar is directly governed by the theology of the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas is an offshoot. Where Jews are concerned, the Muslim Brotherhood is a fusion of Islamism and Nazism, and actually genocidal in intent. Through another radical group, American Muslims for Palestine, the Muslim Brotherhood funds the student group that has been one of the primary organizers of these protests, Students for Justice in Palestine. They also fund a group of very confused Jews at these protests, Jewish Voices for Peace. This money trail was exposed by Charles Asher Small at the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy. Qatar also owns major soccer teams in Europe, and Al Jazeera, the so-called news organization, which has the same journalistic integrity as Russia Today. It’s just a fountain of Islamist lies. All of this amounts to a psyop on the West, and on Western education in particular. For decades, we have had Middle East Studies departments funded by Islamist theocrats and antisemites. Why have we tolerated this malicious exercise of soft power? It seems that money and oil are still just irresistible.

Students For Justice in Palestine, wrote the following in response to the atrocities of October 7th:

National liberation is near — glory to our resistance, to our martyrs, and to our steadfast people! … Resistance comes in all forms — armed struggle, general strikes, and popular demonstrations. All of it is legitimate, and all of it is necessary.

This was their immediate response in support of the intentional massacre of families and the taking of children as hostages, before Israel did anything in response. That’s the moral vision that inspired these campus protests.

However, direct funding by Islamist theocrats is only one strand of influence, as I’ll discuss. There is also the identitarian moral panic that has deluded the Left for years, which I have covered a lot on this podcast—which maps every conflict in the world to an oppressor-oppressed narrative. Again, I don’t want to exaggerate the scope of the problem. But it is pretty appalling that the largest student protest movement since the 1960s has distinguished itself by being this confused about what is really going on in the world, and is lending support to groups like Hamas, that represent the annihilation of everything these students should value.

The next time I see a job applicant from what used to be a great university—Harvard, Princeton, Yale, or even my own alma maters —Stanford and UCLA, which have been terrible—my first thought will be, were you one of these imbeciles who couldn’t figure out who the bad guys were on October 7th? Really, the brand damage to these institutions has been extraordinary.

We now know that hundreds of professors at these schools support Hamas—which again, is a genocidal death cult. That’s not my opinion; that is how Hamas describes itself. They want to kill all the Jews on Earth and to die as martyrs. That is the recipe for being an antisemitic, genocidal death cult. Any professor who supports Hamas should be fired—as you would fire any professor who openly supported the Nazis in the immediate aftermath of a Nazi atrocity. This is not a first amendment issue. No one has a constitutional right to be at Harvard, in any capacity.

And I can say with confidence, that the first good schools to accomplish a hard reset here—admitting that they have lost their way, purging the DEI bureaucracy and theocracy that they built over decades where the best of intentions grew malignant and metastasized… the first universities to fully reboot a commitment to Enlightenment values—No more money from Qatar, you idiots. No more stealth Islamism in your departments of Middle Eastern studies. No more reverse racism against Asian and White applicants. No more identitarian victim culture. No more dowsing for racists. No more whinging about Halloween costumes. No more intersectional arsonists pretending to put out fires that they started. Just great books, and great teachers, and real research, and no more fucking apologies… The first elite schools to do that, will win so much support and good will, and an avalanche of applications and donors, they’ll solidify their reputations into the next century.

I wouldn’t even know where I would want to send my daughters to college at this point. Happily, we don’t have to think about this for a couple of years. But all the best schools, and even the second and third best schools, appear to be in the process of destroying themselves. Again, I realize that it’s a minority of students protesting on even the most beleaguered campuses. But it’s the response of the institutions themselves that has been so reprehensible.

As a result of all this, there is a widespread sense in the Jewish community that more must be done to combat antisemitism. There is even a bill that just passed the House of Representatives, the “Antisemitism Awareness Act,” which would make it easier for Jews to make civil rights complaints. Unfortunately, this bill seems to conflate certain criticisms of Israel with antisemitism. I will grant that most people who claim to be anti-Zionist at this point are probably also antisemitic. This is pretty obvious from what they are saying and not saying. It used to be the case that you could be anti-Zionist without being antisemitic. My friend Christopher Hitchens certainly was that. And I was sort of that, at one point. But I’m not sure it’s a position one can truly occupy now.

October 7th changed my thinking on this. I remain uncomfortable with the concept of any sort of religious ethno-state. But given the murderous antisemitism of so much of the world, given that almost every country that has had a population of Jews has at some point actively persecuted them and driven them out—literally, almost any country you can name in Europe or North Africa or the Middle East had done this at some point. Given the tolerance of this reality by billions of onlookers—well, then the Jews clearly need their own state, and it should defend itself without apology. We have the two largest religions on Earth, Christianity and Islam, which encompass half of humanity, whose theology has reviled the Jews as eternal enemies for thousands of years. If half the world hated the Yazidis like this, and if much of what the world believed about them amounted to a deranged conspiracy theory, I would say that the Yazidis need their own state too. I’ll be happy to revisit the issue in a hundred years after we have made some moral progress. But until then, count me a committed Zionist.

However, I think talking about “Zionism” is totally counterproductive. We should talk about Israel’s right, as the lone democracy in the Middle East, to defend itself. I also think that focusing on antisemitism at this moment—as much as it really is a problem—is the wrong approach to addressing a much more fundamental problem: which is the hatred of Western civilization coming from so many of its own inhabitants and beneficiaries, and the very real clash between the West (which includes Israel every other civilized democracy) and Islam—in particular Islamism and Jihadism. Depending on the context we can call it “radical Islam” or “Islamic extremism” or “Islamofascism.” Call it whatever you want, but what you can’t do, honestly, is say that this species of belligerent lunacy has no connection to the mainstream religion of Islam.

Why do I think that a narrow focus on antisemitism is mistaken? There are many people on college campuses now who support Hamas—which is as antisemitic, on its face, as supporting the Nazis. However, I think that hating Jews is not really what many of these people are about. As I said, some of them are Jewish. So what explains their behavior? Well, they hate the West, or think they do. They hate Western power. In the American context, they hate Whiteness, perhaps above all—and they think the sin of racism subsumes everything. In the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, they consider the Jews white and the Palestinians black. Is this utterly moronic? Yes, it is. At least half the Jews in Israel are Middle Eastern or North African in descent. The only black people you’ll find there are Ethiopian Jews, some of whom are fighting for the IDF. So kids, all your concern about white privilege, as you bounce between lacrosse practice and Starbucks is misapplied here. Should you be kicked out of Yale for being this stupid? Probably. But your stupidity is not quite the same as antisemitism.

Yes, antisemitism cuts across this landscape in ways that are very depressing, and I’m not seeking to minimize it. For instance, as you move rightward along the political spectrum, you meet more and more people who effortlessly recognize the derangement of the Left, and the sickening apologies for Islamic fanaticism that come from people who imagine that Harvey Weinstein is the worst person who ever lived—whereas there are whole societies in the Muslim world where a person like Weinstein would be considered unusually well-adjusted in his attitude towards women. The Left is still full of the sorts of people who blamed Salman Rushdie for the fatwa that forced him into hiding for a decade, and which finally got him nearly killed onstage in New York, after 33 years of looking over his shoulder. These are the same people who blamed the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists for having had the gall to get themselves murdered in Paris. These imbeciles on the Left range from current darlings of alternative media like Glenn Greenwald to members of elite institutions whose very purpose is to defend freedom of speech, like the PEN America Foundation.

As you move rightward in our politics, you meet more and more people who easily see the insanity of all this—words are violence but clitorectomies and suicide bombing is somehow indigenous wisdom and the voice of the oppressed? But then, of course, as you move further rightward you meet more and more people who hate Jews: As scheming globalists who want Americans to fight in foreign wars—perhaps today in defense of Israel, or Ukraine, which happens to be run by a Jew. But this allegation goes back to WW1 and WW2. Both world wars were instigated by Jews, don’t you know? This is Tucker Carlson’s audience—the Great Replacement cult. When things went sideways over at the Daily Wire, these are the geniuses who followed the crackpot Candace Owens into the abyss—and finally got a chance to tell Ben Shapiro what they really think of him and his fellow Jews.

But, of course, if you land on just the right spot on the Right, among old-school Evangelical Christians—then you can find people who can generally be counted upon to worry about the fate of the Jews, and who will defend Israel, which is a relief frankly. But their support comes with a strange twist—because they expect that when temple is finally rebuilt in Jerusalem, and Jesus returns—well, let’s just say he won’t be in a mood to debate the finer points of theology with the Jews. So, Evangelicals are philosemitic only up to a point.

So I don’t mean to downplay the reality of antisemitism. A vastly disproportionate amount of hate crime in the US is committed against Jews. It’s not against blacks, and it’s certainly not against Muslims, despite what the Islamist front group The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) would have you believe. In fact, a lot of this crime comes from blacks and Muslims themselves, who just happen to do more than their fair share of hating Jews. Jews are about 2 percent of the population, and they have always received around 50 percent of the hate crime. Even after 9/11 they received far more hate than Muslims did in America. Since October 7th, the number of incidents has soared, and this is in response to the worst atrocity perpetrated against Jews since the Holocaust.

So if you’re Jewish, or even if you’re not, and you think all of this is seriously alarming, I think you’re right. And I’m sure I will do some future podcasts and other work on the problem of Antisemitism. But I also think that Jews should not try to compete in the Oppression Olympics that have deranged so much of Western culture. The direction of progress is not to convince the rest of America that we Jews have it worse than blacks and Muslims, or just as bad. And I don’t think the UK is going to sort itself out by becoming more focused on its Jewish population as a victim group. We simply have to get past the politics of identity. And we have to defend Western values. We have to defend, not identities, but the ideas that make freedom and tolerance possible. We have to recognize that there are real threats to freedom and tolerance in this world, and identity politics is one of them. Another happens to be coming from the fastest spreading religion on Earth which has some 2 billion adherents. Are all Muslims a threat to freedom and tolerance? No. But almost all of them are doing a terrible job of acknowledging, much less combating, the dangerous fanaticism that is seething at the core of their religion.

So I don’t think we need a new Jewish media platform to compete with the malicious fantasies that pour forth from Al-Jazeera, as harmful as those have been. We need the New York Times and BBC to become morally sane again. Again, I’m not suggesting that antisemitism isn’t a problem; I’m suggesting that a real defense of Western values would solve that problem, among many others.

Nevertheless, it is easy to see why some of our kids are confused about Gaza. They are being inundated with misinformation about Israel—that the Jews are settler colonialists, that they have built an apartheid state, that they are guilty of genocide. These lies didn’t start on October 8th. They’ve been promulgated for decades, and it seems that no matter how patiently one corrects them, nothing changes. And the photos coming out of Gaza certainly don’t help. As I’ve said before, there is no political analysis or moral argument that makes sense of images of dead children being pulled out of rubble.

It is also natural for people to look at the history of conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and imagine that there is some moral parity between the two sides. In fact, because Israel has become more powerful, most people imagine that the responsibility for the ongoing conflict falls more on the Jews. Israel is now perceived to be the bully with advanced weaponry, and the Palestinians are merely victims, throwing rocks. Even in the aftermath of October 7th, when you have an avowedly genocidal organization like Hamas, butchering noncombatants and taking women and children hostage, and firing rockets by the thousands purposely into civilian areas, we still have vast numbers of Westerners—and a majority of our own youth, apparently—believing that Israel is in the wrong. And that it effectively has no right to defend itself, or to even exist.

Leaving other variables aside—like the identitarian disgrace of wokism, the oppressor-oppressed framing of everything that has become standard on the Left, as well as the frank anti-Semitism that we know is there—what we are seeing on our college campuses is only possible because people don’t understand the threat that Islamic extremism poses to open societies everywhere. Again, what’s happening on our college campuses is many things, but the level of moral confusion required to support Hamas and to demonize the people who are fighting Hamas, requires that one not recognize what Hamas is.

And in a way, this is also understandable. It is natural to imagine that people everywhere are more or less the same and that they basically want the same things in life. It is easy to see how one might think that normal people would never resort to violence of the sort we saw from Hamas on October 7th—burning families alive on purpose, raping women and cutting their breasts off and then killing them, and shrieking with joy all the while. Normal people wouldn’t do this, couldn’t do this, unless they have been subjected to some unendurable misery and injustice. They must have been driven insane by their own trauma. Let’s leave aside those who claim that those things didn’t actually happen on October 7th. Most people understand what happened, and yet given the assumption that people everywhere are more or less the same, the very extremity of the violence we saw on October 7th seems to put the moral onus on its victims, somehow.

And this weird distortion of moral intuition casts a shadow over the whole history of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. The fact that the Palestinians could have produced an endless supply of suicide bombers during the Second Intifada—and that they would target noncombatants, even children, with this barbarism—that itself was considered proof that they had been pushed well beyond the brink by the Israelis. Otherwise, normal human beings would never behave in so extraordinarily destructive a way. It is easy to see how uninformed people could make this assumption. This was a very useful point that the writer Paul Berman made twenty years ago in his book, Terror and Liberalism.

Similarly, people assume that groups like Hamas, or al-Qaeda, or even the Islamic State, attack Western targets for more or less normal political reasons. They think these movements are anti-colonial, or straightforwardly nationalistic. And so they think that the extremity of their violence is once again, at bottom, the fault of Western powers. The chickens have finally come home to roost.

While understandable, these assumptions have been obviously wrong for decades—for longer than I have been alive even. To believe any of this now, as almost every secular person does by default, certainly as you move left of center politically, is to be totally deluded by a masochistic fantasy. And it is a dangerous fantasy because it is being consciously weaponized against, not just Israel, but against every western society. Islamic extremists know that most of us, especially in our elite institutions, are simply drunk on white guilt and self-doubt. They can see that we live in a perpetual circular firing squad of sanctimony. They know that if they just use the word “racism”—even though it has absolutely no application when we are talking about the fastest growing religion in a hundred countries—they know this word settles all arguments, left of center, no matter idiotic the person is who wields it. They know that we are constantly worried about being the bad guys. They know that our kids find it very easy to believe that we are and have always been the bad guys. And they have been manipulating Western society for decades. And they have been aided by legions of useful idiots on the Left.

And so there is a pervasive inability and even unwillingness on the part of journalists, and politicians, and scholars to recognize the degree to which sincere religious belief and identity drive conflict in the Muslim world—between rival sects and between Muslims and non-Muslims. There is a fundamental lack of understanding about how Islam differs from other religions here. In fact, it is widely considered a symptom of bigotry to even say that Islam is different from other religions in any way that matters.

There are over 50 Muslim-majority countries. None of them are good places to live if you care about human freedom. This is very unlikely to be an accident. Who would imagine that killing people for blasphemy or apostasy would have a chilling effect on free thought? Who would imagine that the explicit denial of political equality for women might have something to do with its absence throughout the Muslim world? Even noticing the connection here, between explicit religious doctrines and the unambiguous abridgement of human rights, is thought to be a symptom of “Islamophobia.”

I want to make a couple of basic observations about Islam, that have the virtue of being important and uncontroversial—or at least they should be uncontroversial, because they are quite obviously true.

And if you think I’ve said all this before, and it bores you—well then just think about how I feel. I wouldn’t touch this topic ever again, if I thought other people were doing an adequate job of it. There’s a spell that simply has to be broken here, because it threatens to ruin everything. And if you don’t see it, as so many don’t, you are just blind.

From the point of view of Islam, our world is divided into two realms: the realm of belief and the realm of unbelief. This is something that Islam shares with Christianity, of course, but the similarities pretty much end there. There is no “render unto Caesar those things that are Caesar’s” in Islam. Rather, Islam is meant to totally subsume a person’s life and the governance of society. It is intrinsically political. Therefore, the modern distinction, upon which so many of us have placed our hopes, between Islam and Islamism—which is the explicit intrusion of the religion into politics—is just that, a modern distinction. It is one that we hope can be made true and effective—and we hope that the latter orientation, that of 20th century, aggressively resurgent political Islam, can be resisted and ultimately extinguished in modern societies. But this secular distinction has little traditional justification, if any. This is where the differences between Islam and Christianity become highly relevant, and ominous.

Take a moment to consider this, as though for the first time:

Muhammad wasn’t the Muslim Jesus. It’s important to notice that the man was not crucified. He was a statesman and a warlord. He fought in dozens of battles and was victorious. And in Islam, Muhammad is the very model of the ideal man. Just imagine how Christianity might be different if Jesus routinely had his enemies killed and their wives taken as sex slaves. You think it might be just a little different? Do you think Christianity might be just a little different if Jesus had been less like a hippie with a steady supply of MDMA and more like Tony Soprano?

The first Muslims didn’t spend centuries, as the early Christians did, as outsiders being oppressed by their unbelieving masters. They tasted political power from the very beginning. The first Muslims created an empire more or less immediately after the death of the Prophet, and then they just crushed everyone for 500 years. Unlike Judaism, Islam enjoins its followers to spread their faith—the one true and completely correct faith—to the ends of the Earth. Christianity is also a relentlessly missionary faith, of course, but from its inception, it was a religion of weakness—again, Christ was crucified. “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the Earth,” remember? Islam, from the first moment, was a religion of power. The idea of non-Muslims ruling over Muslims, or even having equivalent power alongside them perpetually, has always been anathema. It’s an error to be rectified, through spiritual struggle, sure, but also through physical violence. The fact that Islam has failed to achieve dominance in our world—and has proven, for nearly a thousand years, to be quite backward and weak—is a perennial source of humiliation. By the light of the doctrine, it makes absolutely no sense. It is a sacrilege. From the point of view of Islam, the status quo is intolerable.

And this general attitude of affronted dignity, this yearning for victory, which century after century has been out of reach, affects everything that Islam touches. It is why the history of peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians has been so hopeless. Have the Israelis made mistakes? Of course. Do the Jews have their own religious fanatics? Yes. But the peace process between the Israelis and the Palestinians has been rendered hopeless from the start because for a majority of Palestinians, and for vast numbers of Muslims in the region, the mere presence of a Jewish state in the holy land is totally unacceptable. It’s a “nakba”—a catastrophe. It is a perversion of a sacred history. And it is an abject failure of the mission of Islam—which is to conquer the world for the glory of God. And, above all, to never forsake Muslim lands once they have been conquered, which of course Palestine once was. As it is said in the Koran, “Kill them wherever you find them and drive them from the places from which they drove you.” This is not a religion of peace, it is a religion of conquest and submission.

There is a lot to criticize in all religions. And I have certainly done my fair share of that. But it is simply a fact that the doctrine of holy war and a love of martyrdom—and an utter intolerance for blasphemy and apostasy—are central to Islam in a way that they are not central to other religions.

Of course, not all Muslims want to live this way, and that is wonderful. That’s why our world isn’t in total chaos. But the problem is that when you look at the worst examples of jihadist barbarism and atrocity—the behavior of Hamas on October 7th, or the Islamic State on every day of the year—it is very difficult to say how these people are getting Islam wrong. To be clear, I’m not saying that there is only one Islam, and that the extremists have it right. I’m saying that they don’t have it obviously wrong. Their version of the faith is all-too-plausible.

What did the worst members of the Islamic State do that Muhammad himself didn’t do or wouldn’t have approved of? That is a very difficult question to answer. And the fact that is a difficult question to answer, is increasingly a problem for the entire world. If you ask the same question about Jesus or Buddha, it’s a very easy question to answer. What is Hamas doing that Jesus or Buddha didn’t do or wouldn’t have approved of? Everything.

I recently stumbled upon an article in The New York Times from 15 years ago. I doubt the Times would publish such an article today. It’s very short, so I’m going to read you the whole thing.

Fighter Sees His Paradise in Gaza’s Pain

By Taghreed El-Khodary

Jan. 8, 2009

GAZA CITY

The emergency room in Shifa Hospital is often a place of gore and despair. On Thursday, it was also a lesson in the way ordinary people are squeezed between suicidal fighters and a military behemoth.

Dr. Awni al-Jaru, 37, a surgeon at the hospital, rushed in from his home here, dressed in his scrubs. But he came not to work. His head was bleeding, and his daughter’s jaw was broken.

He said Hamas militants next to his apartment building had fired mortar and rocket rounds. [Notice the detail here: next to his apartment building] Israel fired back with force, and his apartment was hit. His wife, Albina, originally from Ukraine, and his 1-year-old son were killed.

“My son has been turned into pieces,” he cried. “My wife was cut in half. I had to leave her body at home.” Because Albina was a foreigner, she could have left Gaza with her children. But, Dr. Jaru lamented, she would not leave him behind.

A car arrived with more patients. One was a 21-year-old man with shrapnel in his left leg who demanded quick treatment. He turned out to be a militant with Islamic Jihad. He was smiling a big smile.

“Hurry, I must get back so I can keep fighting,” he told the doctors.

He was told that there were more serious cases than his, that he needed to wait. But he insisted. “We are fighting the Israelis,” he said. “When we fire we run, but they hit back so fast. We run into the houses to get away.” He continued smiling.

“Why are you so happy?” this reporter asked. “Look around you.”

A girl who looked about 18 screamed as a surgeon removed shrapnel from her leg. An elderly man was soaked in blood. A baby a few weeks old and slightly wounded looked around helplessly. A man lay with parts of his brain coming out. His family wailed at his side.

“Don’t you see that these people are hurting?” the militant was asked.

“But I am from the people, too,” he said, his smile incandescent. “They lost their loved ones as martyrs. They should be happy. I want to be a martyr, too.”

That’s the end of the article.

This is the problem. We don’t have to get into a time machine and sort out the history of the region. We don’t have to talk about 1948 or 1967. Without this specific form of religious fanaticism, the conflict between Israel and her neighbors would be an ordinary conflict. It would be easy enough to negotiate. It would be possible for the Jews and Muslims to decide to build wealth together. They could have turned Gaza into an absolutely gorgeous resort on the Mediterranean. If all you care about is the well-being of the Palestinians, you should want them to be free of this lunatic ideology that has made them impossible to live with.

But for some reason, most academics and journalists refuse to recognize what is being revealed in an article like this. They desperately want to think that specific religious doctrines—like the idea that martyrs go straight to Paradise—are either not believed by anyone, or if believed, have no effect on a person’s behavior. This is without question the most mystifying and infuriating form of ignorance I have ever encountered.

Of course, we all desperately want to believe that there is a clear line of distinction between the real fanatics, in a group like Hamas, and the Palestinian people. And this will be true for many Palestinians, I have no doubt. Those people are effectively hostages. But it’s not true for all Palestinians, and it’s probably not even true for most of them. For instance, whenever polled, support for suicide bombing against civilians has always been sickeningly high among Palestinians—around 70 percent. Support for specific terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah generally ranges between 40 and 60 percent. So we’re not talking about just a few radicals.

Have you seen the videos of Israeli hostages being taken into Gaza on October 7th? The images of blood covered girls being dragged into vehicles and onto motorcycles? Have you seen the men swarming around these hostages, celebrating their capture, shouting Allahu Akbar? Put yourself in the minds of these men. Perhaps you can understand all this jubilance and malice being expressed over captured male soldiers—like the Black Hawk Down incident in Somalia. But imagine celebrating the kidnapping of girls—some whom have clearly been raped and seriously injured. In one of these videos, a young woman appears to have had her Achilles tendons cut so that she can’t run away. Imagine celebrating the capture of a terrified woman holding her children. Can you imagine this?

After 9/11, as an American, traumatized by an act of terror of a sort that we had never seen on our shores, imagine if Seal Team Six had captured some random Saudi women and children and paraded them as hostages through Times Square? Can you imagine dancing for joy and spitting in the faces of these terrified women? Imagine our soldiers dragging the mutilated bodies of other Saudi noncombatants along the sidewalk. Can you imagine people coming out of their offices and shrieking with joy and stomping on their bodies? Can you imagine Israelis doing this to the bodies of Palestinian noncombatants in the streets of Tel Aviv? No, you can’t. Culture matters. Beliefs matter. So whether they belong to the organization or not, the people you see in those videos are the same as Hamas.

Once again, I need to touch the handrail here, so you all don’t fall over: Am I saying that all Muslims are dangerous fanatics? No. Are they all aspiring martyrs committed to waging jihad? Of course not. And that is a very good thing. Do all Christians believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus? I am sure that many, many millions at this point don’t. It is, after all, getting harder and harder to believe such things. But it is, nevertheless, true to say that a belief in the physical Resurrection is absolutely core to Christianity. This is not controversial. It’s like saying Apple builds smartphones. Any debate on that topic is a fake debate. You want to be a Christian who thinks that the Resurrection was just spiritual, or metaphorical? Great. You’ve changed the religion. You’re making progress. We love you for it.

Any debate about whether Islam really teaches, at its core, a worldview that justifies the barbarism of Hamas, is a fake debate, because Islam does teach this. And much depends on the majority of Muslims worldwide reframing, and ignoring, or otherwise relinquishing some of the core tenets of Islam. Because they are absolutely at odds with our common project of building open, pluralistic societies. Acknowledging this and demanding that Muslims themselves acknowledge this is not bigotry. It is basic sanity. The opposition between radical Islam and Western values is an existential concern for Israel, and it could one day become an existential concern for the rest of us.

Am I saying that things are hopeless? No. In fact, it is a very hopeful sign that several middle eastern regimes appear to want normalized relations with Israel at this point. And the fact that the Saudis and Jordanians helped repel Iran’s recent drone and missile attack on Israel was also very promising. However, the fact that Arab monarchs and dictators can see the wisdom of changing their policies toward Israel does not mean that attitudes have changed on the so-called “Arab street”—and what the street will tolerate will limit what even dictators can do. These attitudes will, once again, be massively informed by Islam. There is also the fact that any Arab solidarity with Israel against Iran might have less to do with truly shared human values, and more to do with the sectarian schism between Sunni and Shia Islam. But if these autocrats want to drag their countries into the modern world, I’m certainly rooting for them.

However, the deeper principle is that there is a clash of civilizations between traditional Islam and Western values. And what we are seeing on college campuses is a very successful manipulation of Western weakness—wherein we can have our values of tolerance and diversity and self-criticism and compassion weaponized against us.

Ask yourself: What is it that we want and are right to want, and must defend without apology, in the West? Rational conversation, individual freedom, the rule of law, the consent of the governed, the peaceful transfer of power, a strong civil society, and yes, tolerance of difference—where that difference doesn’t put all other good things in peril. What do these good things give us? They give us open societies, where scientific progress, and creative intelligence, and increasing wealth, and social mobility, and personal security, and public justice, and a healthy environment, and institutional transparency, and a generous social safety net are, more and more, the norm. Obviously, we have imperfectly secured these goods, even in the best societies on Earth. But it is just as obvious that some places have none of them—and worse, some people, some groups, and even whole cultures don’t want most of these things. It is time to admit that not everyone wants a good life as you and I understand it. “Hey kids, Hamas does not want what you want. They would throw your LGBTQ+ friends off rooftops. And, I’m sorry to say, many Palestinians want what Hamas wants.” This is a hard truth, and it has made peace in the Middle East so far impossible.

The people of the future, and perhaps our future selves, will know what we can’t know now: which is, how we handled this moment: how or whether we rose to the challenge of having our deepest principles used against us. Carefully inverted and used against us—freedom of speech, tolerance of diversity, self doubt—these virtues can be used against their adherents cynically and with evil intent. That is what Islamic extremists are doing all over the world. That is what their organizations are doing inside our own societies. This is not a conspiracy theory. This has all been publicly visible for decades. And they are being facilitated by useful idiots, as is now especially evident on our college campuses.

Of course, we are also being played by Russia and China and perhaps other hostile foreign actors who are fanning the flames of our own partisanship and hysteria. But part of that hysteria is that many of us now perceive any effort to limit the spread of misinformation and social contagion to be the first signs of Orwellian repression from our own government. We live in a country where people go berserk whenever they learn that the government can access information, through a court order, that they themselves routinely give to random apps and other services just for the sake of convenience. It is utterly childish to imagine that our interests as a nation are best served by total institutional distrust—where we have people like Edward Snowden and Julian Assange hacking and leaking state secrets continuously. Most people haven’t spent five minutes imagining the gravity of what must be in every US President’s daily briefing. We have to grow up and do what it takes to protect our society from people and groups and foreign adversaries that actually want to destroy it.

Of course, it’s true that fighting terror and confusion can put the very freedoms we seek to protect in jeopardy. It is also true that in the presence of sufficient terror and confusion, we will embrace a regime of surveillance, and censorship, and even violence that could seem to justify the fears of every conspiracy theorist—and make it seem that the real threat to liberty is coming from our own side, from our own institutions and from our own government. We have to perform this highwire act successfully.

We can’t forget our actual values. Take immigration: Providing sanctuary to real refugees fleeing violence, and welcoming immigrants who are seeking better lives, and who want to build those lives in the West, is one of our core humanitarian values. We don’t want to get rid of that. Emma Lazarus’s poem inspired by the Statue of Liberty, which is now inscribed on a plaque there: “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free!” That’s not just sentimental bullshit. That's the best of America. It’s never quite been our immigration policy. It’s always been aspirational. But we want to be a country that is strong enough and generous enough to be a light unto the rest of the world. Emma Lazarus, incidentally, was Jewish. The Great Replacement started there, fellas, with the Statue of Liberty. (You might want to get on that, Tucker. That’s your bread and butter right there.)

The question is how can open societies like ours maintain their values, and even improve them, in a world where we have real enemies? You don’t have to be a xenophobe or a Christian Nationalist or a Nazi or any other species of asshole to recognize that some people are coming into our societies with no intention of ever sharing our values. Again, this is about culture—ideas and their consequences—not the color of people’s skin. If we imported a sufficient number of communists into the United States, it would be no surprise if we one day discovered that we had a problem with communists seeking to demolish the very foundations of our economy. And it would serve us right—they were wearing their antipathy for capitalism on their sleeves the whole time. They were telling us, ad nauseam, what they want to accomplish—the destruction of capitalism. How could we be surprised if a massive influx of committed communists eventually posed a threat to our way of life? Similarly, if we import a sufficient number of Islamists and jihadists, we will eventually have a problem with political and militant Islam. This is guaranteed. And to my eye, much of Western Europe already has this problem to a degree that it should find intolerable.

It is completely rational, and not at all an expression of bigotry, as an American, to not want to follow Western Europe down that path. Does this mean that I was in favor of Trump’s idiotic ban on Muslim immigration? No. Given that we need to win a war of ideas within the Muslim community, given that we need to inoculate Western societies against Islamic extremism, some of the most valuable immigrants we could have, in my view, are truly secular Muslims, truly liberal Muslims, and above all ex-Muslims. We want people who come from Muslim-majority societies and who understand exactly why life in those societies is not as good as it is in the West—not just because we have more money, but because we have better values. We want people from Pakistan and Iran who are appalled by religious fanaticism. Put these people at the front of the line. There is not a shred of xenophobia, or bigotry, much less racism, implied by anything I have said on this podcast.

But let’s not lie to ourselves that our societies can absorb an endless number of profoundly ideological people who only feign tolerance of diversity because they are in a position of weakness—and who, when strong, will seek to impose their religious strictures on everyone else. The truth is, Islamists (to say nothing of jihadists) seek to impose their religion on everyone else even from a position of weakness. And Western Europe has been groaning under that pressure for decades.

As with immigration, so it is with free speech: I think the US is in a much better position than other country because we have the First Amendment. But the First Amendment isn’t a perfect guide for private platforms and publishers in deciding what speech to disseminate, or to amplify algorithmically, or to sponsor. We are simply drowning in lies that are rendering our society increasingly ungovernable. This problem exists equally, if differently, on both sides of our political landscape. Right of center, some of the most prominent voices in alternative media regularly launder Russian propaganda—about elections, and US foreign policy, and the War in Ukraine, and vaccines. Left of center, there is almost pure confusion about Israel and its enemies. At our best universities, we are witnessing a zombie apocalypse of profoundly misinformed kids. Of course, broadcasting divisive lies is generally legal, because it is protected by the first amendment. But that doesn’t mean private platforms and civil society organizations shouldn’t do something to contain the problem.

As I’ve said many times before, if liberals remain confused about Islamic extremism, the appetite for rightwing authoritarianism is going to continue to grow throughout the West. We need to do everything we can to avoid this.

#Sam Harris #hamas #hamas supporters #pro hamas #israel #palestine #pro palestine #terrorism supporters #islam #islamic terrorism #authoritarianism #islamism #jihadism #jihad

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